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      The DeSantis Campaign Is Revealing What Republican Voters Really Want

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      If Ron DeSantis surprises in Iowa and beyond, if he recovers from his long polling swoon and wins the Republican nomination, it will represent the triumph of a simple, intuitive, but possibly mistaken idea: That voters should be taken at their word about what they actually want from their leaders.It was always clear, going into 2024, that a large minority of the Republican primary electorate would vote for Donald Trump no matter what — including, in the event of his untimely passing, for the former president’s reanimated corpse or his A.I. simulation. A smaller bloc strongly preferred a pre-Trump and un-Trump-like Republican; this has become the Nikki Haley constituency.This left a crucial middle bloc, maybe 40 percent of the party in my own guesstimation, that was Trump-friendly but also seemingly persuadable and open to another choice. These were those Republicans who mostly hadn’t voted for Trump in the early primaries in 2016, who had regarded him as the lesser of two evils during his tilt with Hillary Clinton, but who had gradually become more authentically favorable toward him over the course of his presidency — because of the judges he appointed, because of the strength of the economy, because they reacted against the hysteria of his liberal opponents, or just because of the alchemy of partisan identification.I talked to a lot of these kind of Republicans between 2016 and 2020 — not a perfectly representative sample, probably weighted too heavily toward Uber drivers and Catholic lawyer dads, but still enough to recognize a set of familiar refrains. These voters liked Trump’s policies more than his personality. They didn’t like some of his tweets and insults, so they mostly just tuned them out. They thought that he had the measure of liberals in a way that prior Republicans had not, that his take-no-prisoners style was suited to the scale of liberal media bias and progressive cultural hegemony. But they acknowledged that he didn’t always seem entirely in charge of his own administration, fully competent in the day-to-day running of the government.So their official position was that they wanted a version of Trump with less drama, who wasn’t constantly undermined by his generals or his bureaucrats, who didn’t seem confused about the difference between tweeting about a problem and actually addressing it. They didn’t want to go back to the pre-Trump G.O.P., but they also didn’t just want to replay Trump’s first term — especially how it ended, with Trump at war with his own public health apparatus over Covid while a left-wing cultural revolution surged through American cities and schools and mass media.Ron DeSantis’s entire persona as governor of Florida seemed to meet this ostensible demand. He had a strong record of both political and legislative success, having moved Florida rightward at the ballot box and in public policy — a clear contrast with Trump, as a one-term president who presided over notable Republican political defeats. DeSantis was a cultural battler who seemed more adept than Trump at picking fights and more willing than many pre-Trump Republicans to risk the wrath of big donors and corporations. His Covid record was exactly in tune with the party’s mood; he exuded competence when a hurricane hit; he fought constantly with the media and still won over Florida’s swing voters. If Republicans wanted to keep key elements of Trumpism but joined to greater competence, if they wanted a president who would promise to build a wall and then actually complete it, DeSantis was clearly the best and only possibility.Those voters still have a chance, beginning in Iowa, to make the choice they claimed to want. But if current polls are correct and they mostly just return to Trump, what will it say about how political identification really works?One argument will be that DeSantis failed the voters who were open to supporting him, by failing to embody on the campaign trail the brand that he built up in Florida and that had built him solid national polling numbers before he jumped into the race.For instance, it’s clear that the ability to wrangle happily with the liberal media is a crucial part of the Trumpian persona, and having showed some of that ability in Florida, DeSantis unaccountably tried to run a presidential campaign exclusively via right-wing outlets and very-online formats like his disastrous Muskian debut. His lack of charisma relative to Trump was always going to be a problem, but he still made it worse by cocooning himself, initially at least, from the conflicts that should have been a selling point.Or again, any Trumpism-without-Trump would presumably need to copy some of Trump’s flair for ideological heterodoxy, his willingness to ignore the enforcers of True Conservatism and promise big — new infrastructure projects, universal health care, flying cars — whatever the indifferent follow-through. And again, while the DeSantis of Florida seemed to have some instinct for this approach — attacking woke ideology in schools while also raising teacher salaries, say — as a presidential candidate he’s been more conventional, running the kind of ideologically narrow campaign that already failed to deliver Ted Cruz the nomination in 2016.But allowing for these kind of specific critiques of how DeSantis has failed to occupy the space he seemed to have carved out, his struggles still seem more about the gap between what voters might seem to want on paper and how political attractions are actually forged.Here DeSantis might be compared to the foil in many romantic comedies — Ralph Bellamy in a Cary Grant vehicle, Bill Pullman in “Sleepless in Seattle,” the boyfriend left behind in the city while the heroine reconnects with her small-town roots in various TV Christmas movies. He’s the guy who’s entirely suitable, perfectly sympathetic and yet incapable of inspiring passion or devotion.Or again, to borrow an insight from a friend, DeSantis is an avatar for the generation to which he (like me, just barely) belongs: He’s the type of Generation X-er who pretends to be alienated and rebellious but actually has a settled marriage, a padded résumé, a strong belief in systems and arguments and plans — and a constant middle-aged annoyance at the more vibes-based style of his boomer elders and millennial juniors.The Republican Party in the Trump era has boasted a lot of Gen X leaders, from Cruz and Marco Rubio to Paul Ryan and Haley. But numerically and spiritually, the country belongs to the boomers and millennials, to vibes instead of plans.This might be especially true for a Republican Party that’s becoming more working-class, with more disaffected and lower-information voters, fewer intensely focused consumers of the news, less interest than the Democratic electorate in policy plans and litmus tests. (Though even the Democratic electorate in 2020 opted against its most plans-based candidates in the end, which is why an analogy between DeSantis and Elizabeth Warren has floated around social media.)And it’s definitely true in the narrative context created by Trump’s legal battles, all the multiplying prosecutions, which were clearly the inflection point in DeSantis’s descent from plausible successor to likely also-ran.If a majority or plurality of Republican voters really just wanted a form of Trumpism free of Trump’s roiling personal drama, a version of his administration’s policies without the chaos and constant ammunition given to his enemies, the indictments were the ideal opportunity to break decisively for DeSantis — a figure who, whatever his other faults, seems very unlikely to stuff classified documents in his bathroom or pay hush money to a porn star.But it doesn’t feel at all surprising that, instead, voters seem ready to break decisively for Trump. The prosecutions created an irresistible drama, a theatrical landscape of persecution rather than a quotidian competition between policy positions, a gripping narrative to join rather than a mere list of promises to back. And irresistible theater, not a more effective but lower-drama alternative, appears to be the revealed preference of the Republican coalition, the thing its voters really want.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Here Comes Trump, the Abominable Snowman

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      It’s the latest hot TV genre: a woman in a frigid outpost, bundled in puffy outerwear, trying to uncover truths buried in ice.In the new season of HBO’s “True Detective,” Jodie Foster is a cop trudging through snow trying to solve a murder in a remote Alaska town, described as “the end of the world.” On FX’s “A Murder at the End of the World,” Emma Corrin is an amateur sleuth trudging through snow trying to solve a murder in an isolated retreat in Iceland.And now I find myself in puffy outerwear, trudging through snow in glacial Iowa, trying to uncover truths buried in the ice.I don’t have as much of a mystery to unravel as the TV detectives. The only thing the horde of reporters here is trying to figure out is if Donald Trump will win the caucuses on Monday with a plurality or if he can pull off a majority. No one is expecting a Jimmy Carter/Barack Obama-style upset.A blizzard on Friday froze the action. Drivers skidded all over Des Moines, with cars abandoned on highways. Candidates canceled events and scrambled to do telephone town halls. CNN’s Jeff Zeleny donned fleece earmuffs for live reports. Journalists planning to arrive this weekend faced canceled flights. With Trump and the others scrapping in-person rallies, reporters were left jaw-jawing with one another in the lobbies of the Hotel Fort Des Moines and the downtown Marriott.On Friday evening, Trump posted a video, accusingly telling Iowa, “You have the worst weather, I guess, in recorded history.” Maybe he should have gotten here earlier instead of haranguing the judge in his New York fraud trial on Thursday.Candidates’ surrogates resorted to extreme measures. Kari Lake, stumping for Trump in a yellow sweater — a Hawkeye color for her alma mater — joked that they would use “the ancient strategy” of the telephone to reach voters.Campaign aides to Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley were desperately calculating if the weather could give them an advantage: Maybe some of Trump’s older voters in rural areas who have to drive a long way to caucus would not show up on Monday, which could be the coldest day in caucus history, with wind chills potentially hitting 40 below.But the Trump crew here — including Donald Trump Jr. and Jason Miller — roamed around looking sanguine. “We’re confident, not cocky,” Miller told me.Compared with the poor ground game Trump Sr. had in 2016, when he came in second to “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz, as he called him, MAGA world is a model of organization. And that should frighten Democrats.“If you didn’t know any better, you’d think that our grass-roots guys had all been media trained,” Miller said. “Some of these people, because they watch everything the president does, they know any question. It doesn’t matter about whether it be the economy, Biden, witch hunt, Austin.” As in Lloyd. And “the president” Miller refers to is Trump.With a snow day here, I had time to contemplate the real mystery of Iowa: What has happened to America?In January 2008, the Democratic caucuses offered a thrilling contest. In overwhelmingly white Iowa, Barack Obama showed that Americans could propel a Black candidate into the Oval Office. Race was, remarkably, not a big factor in the contest.When I saw Obama at his first event in New Hampshire after his Iowa win, I was still stunned at the result. “Wow,” I said to him. “You really did it.”He looked solemn and a bit blank, recalling the scene in “The Candidate” when Robert Redford, the young, charismatic pol, pulls off an upset over his more seasoned, status quo opponent and murmurs, “What do we do now?”It felt then as if we were embracing modernity and inclusion, moving away from the image of John Wayne’s America.How could we have gone from such a hopeful moment to such a discordant one?Of course, every time there’s a movement, there’s a countermovement, where people feel that their place in the world is threatened and they want to turn back the clock. Trump has played on that resentment, trying to drag us into the past, curtailing women’s rights, inflaming voters to “take back America” and, as he said on Jan. 6, exhorting his base to “fight like hell” or “you’re not going to have a country anymore.”Trump is a master at exploiting voters’ fears. I’m puzzled about why his devoted fans don’t mind his mean streak. He can gleefully, cruelly, brazenly make fun of disabilities in a way that had never been done in politics — President Biden’s stutter, John McCain’s injuries from being tortured, a Times reporter’s disability — and loyal Trump fans laugh. He calls Haley “Birdbrain.” Trump is 77, yet he sees himself as a spring chicken. On Thursday, he put out a video on Truth Social mocking the “White House senior living” center, featuring pictures of the 81-year-old Biden looking helpless and out of it.Obama’s triumph in Iowa was about having faith in humanity. If Trump wins here, it will be about tearing down faith in humanity.That it’s happening in a blizzard is fitting. Trump’s whole life has been a snow job.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Iowa caucuses are ‘important because they’re first’ – but are they democratic?

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      Iowans are set to brave subzero temperatures on Monday when they arrive at their caucus sites at 7pm to formally kick off the process to choose their nominee.In terms of pure numbers, the Iowa caucuses won’t have much of a role in determining who the Republican nominee is. The state allocates 40 delegates in the Republican nominating contest, roughly just 1.6% of the more than 2,400 that are up for grabs. But that small total belies the outsized influence the state can have on US presidential politics.For more than half a century, Iowa has come to occupy a near-mythological place in American politics – becoming known as the place where underdogs can become serious contenders and where dreams of the White House can die. The rural state’s voters often reward retail politicking, giving hope to candidates who visit its 99 counties to shake hands and give stump speeches.Since the 1970s, its caucuses have been the first nominating contest in each presidential cycle. Candidates crisscross the state in hopes of exceeding expectations and gaining momentum. And while it does not always pick the eventual nominee – Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee have all won there – victories there have been rocket fuel to candidates like Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.While Republicans are proceeding as usual with their first-in-the-nation caucuses, Democrats have chosen to shake up their calendar this year. In a largely symbolic move since there is no competitive Democratic primary, the Democratic National Committee has stripped Iowa’s caucuses of their first-in-the-nation status after mounting concerns that the overwhelmingly white state does not reflect the makeup of the party. But a battle over Iowa’s status probably looms for 2028, when there will be a competitive primary.“Iowa is not first because it’s important. It’s important because it’s first,” said Dennis Goldford, a professor at Drake University in Des Moines and the co-author of The Iowa Precinct Caucuses: The Making of a Media Event. “The morning after the caucuses, Iowa falls off the face of the earth.”The importance of being firstIowa wound up being the first state to nominate presidential candidates largely by accident.After Democrats saw violent protests at the 1968 Democratic convention, the party moved to change the way it selected delegates to limit the power of party bosses. In Iowa, that meant holding precinct caucuses, and then conventions at the county, congressional district and state levels. In 1972, the state convention was set for 20 May because a hall was available for that day, according to the New York Times. A slow mimeograph machine meant that first stage of the process, the precinct caucuses, needed to start in January.“It was simply a historical accident,” Goldford said.The caucuses exploded in 1976. In that cycle, Jimmy Carter was not seen as a serious presidential candidate. But his campaign went all in on Iowa, betting that if he won there it would create enough momentum to make him a viable candidate. Carter earned the most votes of any candidate in the caucuses (he finished second behind “uncommitted”) and wound up winning the presidency.Gordon Fischer, a former chair of the state’s Democratic party, said there had been several efforts over the years by other states wanting to edge out Iowa. When he was chair in the early 2000s, Michigan made an unsuccessful play to go first.“As much as I like, love and respect the Iowa caucuses and what Iowans have done over the years, probably it was unrealistic to think we were going to keep it for ever,” Fischer said. “It was just too special.”The growing party divide and its consequencesThere has been a mounting push in recent years to have Democrats change their nomination schedule and strip Iowa of its place at the start of the nominating process.Allowing Iowa to go first, critics argued, gave outsized importance to a state that is overwhelmingly white and did not reflect the base of the Democratic party. It also brought a surge of Democratic attention to a state where Republicans have dominated in recent years (Trump won Iowa in 2020 by more than eight points). The push was exacerbated in 2020 when the Iowa Democratic party botched the release of the caucus results.The Iowa caucus being first also ignores Black voters, Joe Biden has argued, who have been the “backbone” of the party and should have a “louder and earlier voice in the process”, something the Democrats are trying to do by putting South Carolina as the first official contest this year.Last year, the Democratic National Committee officially stripped Iowa of its place at the front of the nominating contest. State Democrats have signaled that Iowa will try to compete again in 2028 for the first spot in the nominating contest.It’s not only bad for Iowans to lose their early status, but for the country as a whole, Fischer said. Iowa has a lot to offer Democrats: media markets are more affordable and the state often rewards candidates who campaign on the ground, de-emphasizing the outsized role of money in politics.And, perhaps crucially for the party, the state is rural, and Democrats have a problem with rural voters, who have increasingly turned toward the GOP. “Iowa gave candidates the opportunity to talk with and hear from voters that had a rural perspective. I’m not sure that’s the case with the other early states,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFor Republicans, however, the caucuses don’t appear to be going anywhere.“I would be shocked if the Republicans wanted to change any of this,” Goldford said. “The Republicans now are essentially the party of rural America. It makes Iowa relevant to maintain for the Republicans and the position it’s in in the nomination process.”Because Republicans are keeping their caucuses, Fischer thinks that gives Iowa a “fighting chance” to make a case for Democrats keeping it, too.‘A nice exercise in democracy’On their face, the caucuses themselves seem to be the picture of what democracy looks like: Americans gathering with their neighbors to debate their political differences.“They force you to do that once every four years. To go and sit and actually have a civil discussion with your neighbors in a moderated atmosphere – if anybody’s seen it operate it’s a marvel,” Art Cullen, the editor of the Storm Lake Times, said. “It’s a nice exercise in democracy and healthy.”But in recent years there has been more discussion of the undemocratic aspects of the caucus. Only allowing people to caucus on a specific day at a specific time shuts out people who might have to work or who can’t find childcare, or who can’t make it because of bad weather.Fischer doesn’t agree with the criticisms of the format. Voters caucus in their own neighborhoods, in small precincts, on a date that’s set well in advance. The caucus allows for people to come together to talk politics and persuade each other for one night.“I think there’s something cool about that. I think there’s something valuable about that. I realize it’s a bit of a barrier, but I think it’s a barrier that can be overcome,” he said.President Biden criticized the caucus process in a letter to the Democratic National Committee in 2022, saying they hinder participation in the voting process.“Caucuses – requiring voters to choose in public, to spend significant amounts of time to caucus, disadvantaging hourly workers and anyone who does not have the flexibility to go to a set location at a set time – are inherently anti-participatory,” Biden wrote. “It should be our party’s goal to rid the nominating process of restrictive, anti-worker caucuses.”Cullen dismissed those concerns, and those that say Iowa is too white to hold this status in the election. He noted that it was Iowa that catapulted the candidacy of Obama, the US’s first Black president.“Spare me the ‘racist’ bullshit. It’s an excuse to get rid of us because they don’t like our airports and our hotels and they really don’t like the cold weather and have an answer about social security. Or having to answer about why two-thirds of Iowa’s counties are losing population.’“It gets criticized because you have to sit around for an hour, and, you know, who wants to spend an hour for democracy? An hour every four years,” he added. More

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      DeSantis Adviser Continues Campaign’s Sharp Attack on Haley

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      A top adviser to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Friday accused Nikki Haley of “greed” as a candidate, saying that she’s trying to damage him to help former President Donald J. Trump in the Iowa caucuses.The comments from David Polyansky, Mr. DeSantis’s deputy campaign manager, came at an event hosted by Bloomberg News on Friday in downtown Des Moines, as the blizzard buffeting the city forced the campaign to cancel some events later in the day — though Mr. Polyansky said that Mr. DeSantis’s ground game was best equipped for the brutal weather barreling.He was joined by the campaign’s spokesman, Andrew Romeo, and its pollster, Ryan Tyson, but he did most of the talking. He said that Ms. Haley is running in Iowa to draw votes toward Mr. Trump and siphon them away from Mr. DeSantis.Mr. Polyansky also repeated Mr. DeSantis’s claim that Ms. Haley, the former South Carolina governor, is running to be Mr. Trump’s vice-presidential pick, and criticized her for not ruling out joining a Trump ticket.Her donors’ dollars “are essentially in-kind contributions to Donald Trump,” he said. “Competition is trying to win. Competition isn’t trying to help one of your opponents,” he said.Later that day, the DeSantis campaign announced that Mr. DeSantis planned to fly straight from Iowa to South Carolina, Ms. Haley’s home state, after the caucuses, to hold a surprise event there on Jan. 16, his campaign said. He will then proceed to New Hampshire, which votes on Jan. 23, for a CNN town hall that evening. The news was first reported by The Associated Press. Although he is trailing in the polls there, Mr. DeSantis’s decision would seem to be a shot at Ms. Haley, as well as a signal to Mr. Trump that he intends to stay in the race. “We hope Donald Trump is ready for a long, scrappy campaign,” Andrew Romeo, the DeSantis campaign’s communications director, said in a statement.Olivia Perez-Cubas, a spokeswoman for Ms. Haley, said that Mr. DeSantis would “say anything to distract from his flailing campaign” after “burning through $150 million in Iowa and losing half his support in the polls.” She added, “Nikki is the only Trump alternative candidate with the resources and momentum to go the distance.”Mr. DeSantis has been bludgeoned by ads from both Mr. Trump’s world and Ms. Haley’s. But Mr. Trump’s team has also aired attack ads against Ms. Haley.Mr. DeSantis has been battling to hold onto second place in a state that he had once banked his candidacy on and in which aides had predicted privately last fall that he would win easily. Mr. Polyansky described the campaign as “joyful,” and said the candidate and the team are having “fun.”He declined to answer when the campaign last conducted a poll. Mr. Tyson, seated two seats away from him, also answered few questions.Mr. Polyansky insisted that the volunteer operation and the work by the DeSantis team — whose field operation has been conducted mostly by a super PAC, Never Back Down — would be critical if temperatures are below zero, as expected, on Monday. But he also said that he could not predict the turnout.“I don’t know how to measure it anymore, I don’t,” he said. The Trump team, he added, claims “they’ve got a great organization and maybe they do.”He added, “We’ll find out on Monday night.”Mr. Polyansky maintained that Mr. DeSantis planned to remain in the race through South Carolina’s primary on Feb. 24.He also said that Mr. DeSantis, who has been criticized even among conservatives for not taking a fight more directly to Mr. Trump, has been going straight at the front-runner for months. Yet Mr. Polyansky’s toughest attacks during the Bloomberg meeting focused on Ms. Haley.Mr. Tyson, a long-serving adviser to Mr. DeSantis, was asked Friday what happened to his camp after the Florida governor’s re-election victory last year, when he had seemed poised to potentially overtake Mr. Trump.“I don’t really have an answer for that,” Mr. Tyson said. When asked if he wished that Mr. DeSantis had waited until 2028 to run for president, he said that he stood by Mr. DeSantis.“I don’t have any second thoughts on that,” Mr. Tyson said.He added, “Doing this second-guessing thing, I just don’t feel is appropriate for me,” during what he described as an “unprecedented atmosphere.” And he said: “I don’t think that’s helpful.”Nicholas Nehamas More

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      This Year’s Iowa Caucuses are Ice-Cold

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      And it’s not just the sub-zero temperatures.It’s the Friday before Caucus Day, and in any other year, Iowa would be humming: candidates racing across the state, answering questions in living rooms, coffee shops and high school gyms. Last-minute get-out-the-vote speeches. Volunteers knocking on doors and handing out leaflets on street corners and in shopping malls.Not this year. Iowa was shut down today, under the threat of a worst-in-a-decade forecast of blinding blizzards and bitter cold. The high temperatures of zero predicted earlier this week now seem positively toasty, compared with what is promised for the days and nights ahead.Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, soldiered out for one event Friday morning before throwing in the shovel, so to speak. Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, scratched her in-person schedule, moving the campaign from living rooms to Zoom. Donald Trump is due here on Saturday; stay tuned.“This is about the worst weather I remember for the Iowa caucuses,” said Gordon Fischer, a former Democratic Party state leader, who has lived in Iowa for 40 years.It was a suitably desultory ending for what has turned into a desultory caucus. Even before the blizzard landed on top of Iowa, the campaign was lower in energy or suspense than any I can recall over some 30 years of covering caucuses.In a state where caucus observers were already scrapping for something to speculate about — and where hundreds of out-of-town political reporters are trapped in local hotels with no candidate events to cover — the misery of the weather has added a welcome bit of uncertainty.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Where’s the beef? Iowa burger joint unveils Republican caucuses menu

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      A restaurant in Des Moines is gearing up for next week’s Iowa Republican caucuses one burger at a time.On Friday, Zombie Burger unveiled its 2024 Iowa caucus specials that feature six items largely inspired by Republican presidential candidates including Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.The limited menu – which is available for in-person dining, carryout or delivery – kicks off with Mom-Aswamy Spaghetti, a Friday-only smashed vegetarian meatball patty, fried spaghetti and marinara croquette with mozzarella inspired by the biotech entrepreneur.Mom-Aswamy Spaghetti is also a nod to Ramaswamy’s use of Eminem’s music on the campaign trail before the rapper – who memorably sang about nervously vomiting up “Mom’s spaghetti” in his 2002 song Lose Yourself – demanded last August that Ramaswamy stop using his music.Describing the sandwich to the Guardian, Zombie Burger said: “In honor of candidate and noted rap artist Vivek Ramaswamy, this vegetarian burger was inspired by Vivek’s captivating live performance of an Eminem classic track at last summer’s Iowa state fair.”Saturday’s menu features a homage to DeSantis called Meatball Ron, a double smashed meatball patty, mozzarella, fried banana peppers and marinara with a “hidden” garlic bread lift.“Say what you will about the nickname … but it’s perfect for a sandwich! This burger in honor of Ron DeSantis offers classic Italian-American flavors,” said Zombie Burger, pointing to the Florida governor’s Italian-American heritage.On Sunday, customers can get a taste of American History 101: a double pimento cheese patty, pulled pork, pulled bacon and fried okra with Carolina Gold sauce.Pointing to Haley, who is from South Carolina, Zombie Burger said: “You don’t have to be an expert on American history to appreciate these classic southern flavors. Inspired by Nikki Haley, former governor of the Palmetto State, this burger features textbook regional ingredients.”Monday’s menu is reserved for Day One Dic-Tater: Flamin’ Hot Cheeto, orange kielbasa sausage, Jack cheese, tater rounds, homemade sauerkraut and Russian dressing.Zombie Burger cited Trump as the inspiration for the burger, particularly his recent comment: “I want to be a dictator for one day.”The 2024 Iowa caucuses specials menu also takes jabs at Joe Biden with two specialty drinks.Throughout the weekend, customers can order the Sleepy Joe Shake, a drink consisting of vanilla ice-cream, chocolate chips and tea-mint syrup, which the restaurant described to be “perfect for nodding off after a ‘low-energy’ day”.The Sleepy Joe Shake draws inspiration from an insult Trump often aims at Biden. The other option – Dark Brandon Shake – features chocolate ice-cream, chocolate-chilli sauce, whipped cream and Red Hots candy. The drink’s name takes inspiration from Let’s Go Brandon, a popular conservative slogan that is widely understood as a coded euphemism for swearing at the president.Describing the drink’s inspiration, Zombie Burger said, “It’s what memes are made of.”The release of the specialty menu comes ahead of the 2024 presidential election which officially kicks off next Monday in Iowa where Republicans are set to gather and hold caucuses to pick their preferred candidate. More

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      Two more DeSantis events postponed amid Iowa storm; Trump weather could dent caucus turnout – as it happened

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      Never Back Down, the Super Pac supporting Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign, says it has had to postpone two more events with him in Iowa today over “unsafe weather conditions”.The Florida governor will not be making it to Pella or Coralville, the group said in a statement.Mother Nature weighed in ahead of Iowa’s presidential caucuses on Monday, and her decision is: no campaigning today, at least not in person. Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley have both called off events in the Buckeye state as a blizzard renders travel perilous, though Haley has shifted to holding town halls via telephone. Donald Trump’s campaign is reportedly worried the significant snowfall may dent caucus turnout, as he hopes for a big win in the state to cement his status as the Republican frontrunner. Back in a comparatively warmer Washington DC, House Republicans announced they will vote to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress next week, while his attorney said the president’s son will show up for a deposition, if lawmakers issue new subpoenas.Here’s what else happened today:
      Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor whose presidential campaign is the among the longest of long shots, says he is still on the road in Iowa.
      The House speaker, Mike Johnson, announced his spending deal with Democrats is still on despite rightwing opposition, lowering the chances of a government shutdown.
      Oregon’s supreme court declined to toss Trump from the state’s primary ballot, at least not yet. The former president cheered the decision.
      Joe Biden acknowledged that defense secretary Lloyd Austin made a lapse in judgment when he waited days to inform the White House he had been hospitalized.
      Kyrsten Sinema, an independent senator from Arizona, said negotiations over changes to the immigration system were making progress.
      The Republican leaders of two House committees investigating Hunter Biden say the president’s son must schedule a behind-closed-doors deposition with them before they will call off their plan to hold him in contempt for defying a subpoena.The statement from the oversight committee chair, James Comer, and the judiciary committee chair, Jim Jordan, comes after Biden’s attorney earlier today notified them that his client would sit for a deposition with them, if they issued new subpoenas. The two committees ordered the president’s son in November to appear for an interview in private, but Biden defied the summons and gave only a brief statement to reporters at the Capitol on the day he was to appear. That has led Republicans to move to hold him in contempt.“House Republicans have been resolute in demanding Hunter Biden sit for a deposition in the ongoing impeachment inquiry. While we are heartened that Hunter Biden now says he will comply with a subpoena, make no mistake: Hunter Biden has already defied two valid, lawful subpoenas,” Comer and Jordan said.“For now, the House of Representatives will move forward with holding Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress until such time that Hunter Biden confirms a date to appear for a private deposition in accordance with his legal obligation. While we will work to schedule a deposition date, we will not tolerate any additional stunts or delay from Hunter Biden.”The stunt they referred to was likely Biden’s brief and unexpected appearance in the audience of the oversight committee on Wednesday, just as lawmakers were considering whether to hold him in contempt.It’s unclear if Comer and Jordan’s statement will meet the requirements set out by Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell, who said in his letter to them that new subpoenas were required because the House has now voted to authorize impeachment proceedings against Joe Biden. The GOP claims the younger Biden can prove allegations of corruption against the president.Here’s video of Joe Biden in Pennsylvania taking questions from a reporter about the news of the day, including the defense secretary’s Lloyd Austin’s hospitalization and the airstrikes ordered against the Houthis in Yemen:During a visit to Pennsylvania to highlight his administration’s efforts to help small businesses, Joe Biden replied “yes” when asked by a reporter if the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, made a lapse in judgment when he waited to tell him he had been hospitalized, Reuters reports.News broke a week ago that the defense secretary was in the hospital, and in the days since, it has been revealed that Austin waited days to inform the White House of his hospitalization resulting from complications related to prostate cancer treatment.While some Republican lawmakers and one Democrat have called on Austin to step down, noting that the secretary is supposed to be constantly available to respond to crises, the White House says Biden continues to have confidence in him:The Iowa caucuses are one of America’s more unique political rituals, since most other states hold the comparatively straightforward primaries to choose their candidates.Here’s the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly with an explainer demystifying the process that is a key part of the road to the presidency:Here’s the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly and Sam Levine with a rundown of all the ways in which Iowa’s blizzard has disrupted presidential campaigning ahead of the state’s first-in-the-nation caucuses on Monday:Candidates and caucus-goers faced extra challenges in Iowa on Friday as a second major snow event in a week hit the state, three days before Republicans are due to kick off their presidential nomination process for the critical election year.According to the National Weather Service in Des Moines, most of Iowa could expect significant, possibly record snowfall, high winds stoking blizzard conditions.“Life-threatening winter weather is expected beginning tonight with heavy snow,” the NWS said on Thursday. “White-out conditions likely Friday into Friday night. To follow, extreme wind chills as low as -45F [-43C] possible through early next week. Plan ahead for this dangerous stretch of winter weather!”In Washington DC and New York, reporters packed thermal underwear and tried to find flights still scheduled. In Iowa City, home of the University of Iowa, heavy snow covered streets overnight and continued to fall. Save for the occasional car, the streets were largely deserted as the temperature hovered at about 15F (-9C). At the local Target, students and other residents stocked up on supplies as snowplows worked outside.Schools and businesses closed. In the state capital, Des Moines Performing Arts announced the postponement of Civic Center shows by the percussion group Stomp.Joe Biden announced a new student loan forgiveness plan on Friday that will provide debt relief to some borrowers enrolled in the new Save plan.
      Starting next month, borrowers enrolled in Save who took out less than $12,000 in loans and have been in repayment for 10 years will get their remaining student debt canceled immediately.
      It’s part of our ongoing efforts to act quickly to give more borrowers breathing room,” Biden tweeted on Friday.
      In a separate statement released on Friday, the education department said that there are now 6.9 million borrowers enrolled in the Save plan as of early January, more than double the enrollment on the Revised Pay As You Earn (Repaye) plan that it replaced in August.Donald Trump’s campaign team has hailed the decision by the Oregon supreme court to turn down a petition to disqualify him from the state’s primary ballot over his involvement in the January 2021 Capitol insurrection.
      Today’s decision in Oregon was the correct one. President Trump urges the swift dismissal of all remaining, bad-faith, election interference 14th amendment ballot challenges as they are un-constitutional attempts by allies of Crooked Joe Biden to disenfranchise millions of American voters and deny them their right to vote for the candidate of their choice,” said a Trump spokesperson.
      He went on to add:
      President Trump will continue to fight these desperate shams, win in November and Make America Great Again.
      Equal Justice USA, a national criminal justice organization, has criticized federal prosecutors’ decision to seek the death penalty for the white supremacist who killed 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York in May 2022.In a statement released on Friday, Jamila Hodge, the executive director of EJUSA, said:
      The government’s decision to pursue a death sentence will do nothing to address the racism and hatred that fueled the mass murder.
      Ultimately, this pursuit will inflict more pain and renewed trauma on the victims’ families and the larger Black community already shattered by loss and desperately in need of healing and solutions that truly build community safety. Imagine if we invested in that instead of more state violence.
      Friday’s decision by federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty is a first for the justice department under Joe Biden’s administration.The Independent Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema has refused to share “differences of opinion” surrounding negotiations of a potential bipartisan border security package.In an interview with ABC 15, Sinema, who is a key negotiator in the talks, said:
      We’re down to the last one or two differences of opinion and I’m confident we’ll be able to resolve those and move forward with this legislation.
      Upon being asked if she could share what the differences in opinions are, Sinema replied: “No.”Mother Nature has weighed in ahead of Iowa’s presidential caucuses on Monday, and her decision is: no campaigning today, at least not in person. Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley have both called off events in the Buckeye state as a blizzard renders travel perilous, though Haley has shifted to holding town halls via telephone. Donald Trump’s campaign is reportedly worried the significant snowfall may dent caucus turnout, as he hopes for a big win in the state to cement his status as the Republican frontrunner. Back in a comparatively warmer Washington DC, House Republicans announced they will vote to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress next week, while his attorney said the president’s son will show up for a deposition, if lawmakers issue new subpoenas.Here’s what else is happening today:
      Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor whose presidential campaign is the among the longest of long shots, says he is still on the road in Iowa.
      The House speaker, Mike Johnson, announced his spending deal with Democrats is still on despite rightwing opposition, lowering the chances of a government shutdown.
      Oregon’s supreme court declined to toss Trump from the state’s primary ballot, at least not yet.
      Never Back Down, the Super Pac supporting Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign, says it has had to postpone two more events with him in Iowa today over “unsafe weather conditions”.The Florida governor will not be making it to Pella or Coralville, the group said in a statement.The long-shot Republican presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson says he is still campaigning, despite Iowa’s gnarly road conditions:The former Arkansas governor and avowed foe of Donald Trump is nowhere in the polls, yet has stayed in the race.Why Republican presidential candidates have called off campaigning today, from the Iowa State Patrol:With her schedule of campaign events in Iowa cancelled today due to the blizzard, Nikki Haley held a telephone town hall with voters in Fort Dodge.It was a fairly typical stump speech for the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, who took pains to point out the exceptionally bad snow storm, and the relief Iowans will feel in a few days, when politicians stop bugging them.“I definitely know I’m not in South Carolina anymore. It is beyond cold,” Haley began.Nodding to the fact that aspiring Republican presidential candidates have been criss-crossing the state for months, hoping to win its first-in-the-nation caucuses, Haley said:
      I know you are excited, because it is three days until the commercials stop, and the mail stops coming to you, and the text messages, everything else. And, so, I can tell you as a governor of the first in the south primary [state], we always loved to see presidential candidates come, and we always love to see them go, so I can appreciate where you’re coming from, and I appreciate you putting up with all of the activity that happens during this time. More