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      Climate crisis ignored by Republicans as Trump vows to ‘drill, baby, drill’

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      In the wake of an Iowa primary election chilled in a record blast of cold weather – which scientists say may, counterintuitively, have been worsened by global heating – Republican presidential candidates are embracing the fossil fuel industry tighter than ever, with little to say about the growing toll the climate crisis is taking upon Americans.The remaining contenders for the US presidential nomination – frontrunner Donald Trump, along with Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis – all used the Iowa caucus to promise surging levels of oil and gas drilling if elected, along with the wholesale abolition of Joe Biden’s climate change policies.Trump, who comfortably won the Iowa poll, said “we are going to drill, baby, drill” once elected, in a Fox News town hall on the eve of the primary. “We have more liquid gold under our feet; energy, oil and gas than any other country in the world,” the multiply indicted former president said. “We have a lot of potential income.”Trump also called clean energy a “new scam business” and went on a lengthy digression on how energy is important in the making of donuts and hamburgers. The Trump campaign has accused Biden of trying to prevent Americans from buying non-electric cars – no such prohibition exists – and even for causing people’s dishes to be dirty by imposing new efficiency standards for dishwashers.Haley, meanwhile, has called the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature climate bill that provides tax credits for renewable energy production and electric car purchases, a “communist manifesto” and used the Iowa election to promise to “roll back all of Biden’s green subsidies because they’re misplaced”. DeSantis, who came second in Iowa, said that on his first day as president he would “take Biden’s Green New Deal, we tear it up and we throw it in the trash can. It is bad for this country.”Last year was, globally, the hottest ever recorded, and scientists have warned of mounting calamities as the world barrels through agreed temperature limits. Last year, the US suffered a record number of disasters costing at least $1bn in damages, with the climate crisis spurring fiercer wildfires, storms and extreme heat.Such concerns were largely unvoiced in frigid Iowa, however, apart from by young climate activists who disrupted rallies held by Trump, Haley and DeSantis. On Sunday, a 17-year-old activist from the Sunrise climate group interrupted a Trump speech to shout: “Mr Trump your campaign is funded by fossil fuel millionaires. Do you represent them, or ordinary people like me?”She was drowned out by boos from Trump supporters, and then scolded from the stage by the former president, who told the activist to “go home to mommy.” He then said the protester was “young and immature”.The continued championing of fossil fuels, and dismissal of young people’s worries about climate change, shows that the Republican candidates are “determined to drag us into a chaotic world just to make a bit more money”, said Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of Sunrise.“Not a single Republican is addressing root causes of the climate crisis. They’ve been bought out by oil and gas billionaires,” said Shiney-Ajay, who added that young climate activists were also dismayed at Biden, who has overseen a record glut of oil and gas drilling, despite Republican claims he has hindered US energy production.“The reality is that every presidential candidate, including Joe Biden, is falling so far short of the climate ambition we need, despite there being millions of lives at stake,” she said.Some Republicans have warned that the party must take climate change seriously if it is to remain viable electorally, with increasing numbers of Americans alarmed about the impacts of global heating. “If conservatives are scared to talk about the climate, then we’re not going to have a seat at the table when decisions are made,” said Buddy Carter, a Republican congressman from Georgia. “We are right on policy, so we need a seat at the table.”Still, polling has shown that the climate crisis remains of minor importance to Republican voters, compared to issues such as the economy and inflation, with just 13% of them saying it is a top priority in a Pew survey last year. None of the party’s leading presidential candidates have sought to significantly change this dynamic, to the frustration of some climate-conscious conservatives.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Republican candidates can’t lose sight of the big picture amid the primary season,” said Danielle Butcher Franz, the chief executive of the advocacy arm of the American Conservation Coalition, a conservative climate group.“Beyond the primary, the next Republican nominee must win over the hearts and minds of young Americans by speaking to the issue they care most about: climate change.”Butcher Franz said there must be “more productive rhetoric and real policy solutions from Republicans. The race for 2024 is an opportunity to do so that no candidate has fully seized.”Even if the candidates aren’t talking much about climate change, its effects are still being directly felt as the Republican primary field moves on to New Hampshire. Icily cold temperatures have gripped much of the US – the Iowa caucus was the coldest on record – due to a blast of Arctic-like weather that has triggered power blackouts, halted flights and caused schools to shut in parts of the country.The Arctic is heating up at four times the rate of the global average, and scientists think this is affecting the jet stream, a river of strong winds that steers weather across the northern hemisphere, and the polar vortex, another current of winds that usually keeps frigid Arctic air over the polar region. Both these systems risk becoming “wavier”, recent research has found, meaning Arctic-like conditions can meander far further south than normal.The current blast of cold weather is “certainly much more likely given how much the planet is warming” said Judah Cohen, a meteorologist at Verisk Atmospheric and Environmental who has studied the phenomenon. “There is scientific evidence that makes severe winter weather consistent or explainable in a warming world. One does not negate the other.”Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at Woods Hole Research Center, said that while it seems counterintuitive, the science was “becoming clear” that extreme cold spells will be a consequence of global heating.“The irony is pretty rich” that Iowa has experienced such conditions during a Republican presidential primary, Francis added. “Of course, the deniers won’t see it that way, and won’t listen to any science that says otherwise.” More

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      Iowa Caucus Recap: Trump’s Win, the Weather, and a Look Toward New Hampshire

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      Listen to and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | AmazonAnna Foley and Lanny Van Daele casting his presidential preference vote in Coralville, Iowa, on Monday.Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette, via Associated PressGoing into the Iowa caucuses, there were a handful of key things we were watching for: Would the frigid weather hamper turnout? Would his overwhelming dominance in the polls translate to a decisive victory for Donald Trump? And finally, could the other candidates muster enough of a showing to keep the race alive?Today: Through conversations with Iowa caucus goers — especially those who preferred another candidate to Trump — we get answers to our questions. And we check in with our colleague Nick Corasaniti in New Hampshire about how the state’s independents are approaching the primary next week — and how confident Trump is of a second early state victory.About ‘The Run-Up’“The Run-Up” is your guide to understanding the 2024 election. Through on-the-ground reporting and conversations with colleagues from The New York Times, newsmakers and voters across the country, our host, Astead W. Herndon, takes us beyond the horse race to explore how we came to this unprecedented moment in American politics. New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      Do Political Ads Even Matter Anymore?

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      A confluence of political forces and changing media behavior are testing their efficacy in the Trump era.In a presidential election year, no glowing rectangle in Iowa or New Hampshire is safe from an endless deluge of political ads.Campaign ads are inescapable on the nightly news, “Wheel of Fortune” and YouTube. Even the high-dollar, high-visibility ad blocks of professional and college football games have become increasingly saturated.It’s a deeply entrenched multimillion-dollar industry, and one of the largest expenses of every presidential campaign. But a confluence of political forces and changing media behavior may be testing the efficacy of political advertising in the Trump era.Nikki Haley and her allied super PAC spent roughly $28 million on broadcast ads in Iowa, according to AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm. Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies spent $25 million. Trump and his super PAC spent only $15 million — and won by more than 30 points.As my colleagues Michael Bender and Katie Glueck reported, that result showed a new depth to the Republican Party’s devotion to Trump. But it also suggests that a smaller universe of persuadable voters and a wholesale shift in viewing habits may have significantly undercut the impact of political advertising.According to Cross Screen Media, an ad analytics firm, only 63 percent of Iowa Republicans are reachable with traditional or “linear” TV ads, as viewers switch to streaming and social media. In 2016, that percentage was still in the 90s. At most, Republican campaigns this year reached 42 percent of likely caucus voters.“I don’t think that people have caught up with where the media consumption is,” said Michael Beach, chief executive of Cross Screen Media.The pivot to streaming is potentially deadly for political ad buyers. Beach estimates that almost 40 percent of the time viewers spend on television is on streaming, but streaming offers far fewer opportunities to show ads to viewers than traditional programming.Granite State mediaNew Hampshire’s presidential race is much closer than Iowa’s was, with polls showing Haley trailing Trump by single digits. And Trump faces a similar advertising deficit, with Haley and her allies spending more than twice as much as Trump’s campaign and its allied super PAC.But the tone of advertising in New Hampshire has taken a sharply negative turn on the former president. Ten times as many negative ads attacking Trump have run in New Hampshire over the past 30 days as ran in Iowa, according to data from AdImpact. The biggest such spender is the SFA Fund, the super PAC supporting Haley, which is portraying Trump as a liar prone to temper tantrums.Trump and his allies have responded, spending $1.4 million on a single ad attacking Haley over immigration, and $2.7 million on one targeting her support for raising the gas tax when she was governor of South Carolina in 2015 (she also called for a corresponding income tax cut).30-second issuesThe New Hampshire ads reveal the key issues that each campaign is hoping will boost their support in the final days. The Trump campaign and MAGA Inc., the super PAC supporting his campaign, have spent more in New Hampshire on ads regarding immigration than any other issue, according to AdImpact.Haley’s campaign has almost exclusively run ads portraying her as representing a “new generation” and castigating Trump and President Biden as too old for the presidency. The SFA Fund has made taxes core to its ad campaign, with nearly half its ad spending over the past month promoting Haley’s pledge to cut taxes for the middle class or defending her record on taxes.(DeSantis, who is far behind Trump and Haley in New Hampshire, had not broadcast any ads in the state in over a month when DeSantis and his super PAC announced Wednesday that they would be leaving the state to focus on South Carolina.)But there may be slightly more of an opportunity for Haley to close the gap. According to Cross Screen Media, 80 percent of New Hampshire Republican voters are reachable by traditional television advertising.Speaker Mike Johnson will most likely need to rely on Democrats to avoid a shutdown.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesThe House G.O.P.’s incredible shrinking majorityThanks to a combination of coincidence, scandal, health issues and political turmoil, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives keeps getting smaller.This week, with lawmakers absent for medical reasons and the recent not-so-voluntary departures of the ousted former speaker Kevin McCarthy and the expelled George Santos, the best G.O.P. attendance that Speaker Mike Johnson can muster as he tries to avoid a government shutdown is the bare-minimum 218 votes. That is before factoring in the impact of rough winter weather across the nation.Another Republican, Representative Bill Johnson of Ohio, is resigning as of Sunday to take a job as a university president, lowering the number to 217 if Representative Harold Rogers of Kentucky, the 86-year-old dean of the House, is unable to quickly return from recuperating from a car accident. Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican, is out until at least next month while undergoing cancer treatment.As a result, the G.O.P. could soon be able to afford just a single defection on any matter if Democrats remain united and have no absences of their own.Republicans are in a real numerical bind. At a time when House Republicans regularly face internal rebellion from hard-line conservatives, Johnson has absolutely no cushion if he chooses to rely strictly on the votes of his own party, which is part of the reason he cut a deal with Democrats on spending to avoid a shutdown later this week, further angering the hard right.Democrats say the recurring scenario of leaning on them for must-pass bills is proof that even though Republicans are the majority party on the tally sheet, they don’t have a working majority because of their diminished forces and constant internal squabbling.“When anything hits the fan, they don’t have 218,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the former longtime Democratic majority leader, referring to the number that represents a basic majority in the 435-member House. “They are not the majority party in this House.”Johnson, the novice speaker, said it was a problem he could handle.“I’m undaunted by this,” he said recently on CBS. “We deal with the numbers that we have.” — Carl HulseRead the full story here.More politics news and analysisBacking down: The super PAC supporting Ron DeSantis began laying off staff.Disorder in the court: A judge threatened to throw Donald Trump out of his defamation trial.No-shows: CNN canceled its Republican debate in New Hampshire for lack of participation.History lesson: Haley and DeSantis were asked about race in America, and it got awkward.You would cry too: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to create his own party to get on the ballot.Read past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Even if Nikki Haley Shocks Trump in New Hampshire, It Won’t Matter

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      Nikki Haley did well enough in the Iowa caucuses Monday night to keep her supporters’ hopes alive. But her third-place showing, on the heels of Ron DeSantis and a mile behind Donald Trump, was also just disappointing enough to raise doubts about her candidacy.Her plan coming out of Iowa is a classic underdog strategy: Use strong early results to upend expectations in the contests to come, reshaping the dynamic of the race one upset victory at a time. So, the thinking goes, her solid-enough performance in Iowa will propel her higher in New Hampshire, where she holds a strong second place in the polls.It’s possible. But even if Ms. Haley does well in New Hampshire, it won’t matter. That’s because Ms. Haley is starkly out of step with the evolution of her party over the past decade.The shape of today’s Republican electorate can be seen most clearly in national polling of Republican voters, where Mr. Trump has led by a substantial margin for months. Even in the unlikely event that all the voters who have told pollsters in recent weeks that they support Mr. DeSantis, Chris Christie and the former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson switched over to Ms. Haley, she would reach only the high 20s, placing her more than 30 points behind Mr. Trump, who sits at around 60 percent. (The voters who have said they support Vivek Ramaswamy, who dropped out of the race on Monday night, would likely switch to Mr. Trump.)Sure, Ms. Haley might peel off some of those Trump voters if she manages to puncture his air of inevitability by knocking him sideways in New Hampshire. But imagining that she could wrest the nomination from him ignores the fact that, if he were to suffer a humiliating setback in New Hampshire, Mr. Trump would be guaranteed to attack her with a viciousness he has so far reserved primarily for Mr. DeSantis. In December, as she climbed in the polls, MAGA loyalists like Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon offered a preview of these sort of slashing attacks (referring to her as a “hologram” sent by donors or as potentially worse than “Judas Pence”).More important, though, the fulfillment of the Haley campaign’s hopes would require a wholesale shift in preferences among millions of Republican voters.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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      Trump doubled his voting base in Iowa. Here’s who voted for him

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      Iowa Republicans showed up on 15 January in force for Donald Trump, voting overwhelmingly in the nation’s first primary for the former president, whose grip on his party has only deepened as he weathers numerous lawsuits and 91 felony charges relating to his business dealings and involvement in attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The Iowa caucuses confirmed polls that have consistently shown Trump carrying a comfortable lead ahead of the remaining Republican challengers.Before the caucuses, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, repeatedly reminded voters and the press that he had toured all of Iowa’s 99 counties. Trump won 98 of them. With the exception of college graduates and voters under 30, who for the most part caucused for DeSantis or the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, most other demographic groups reported strong support for Trump this year.Even young Republican voters favored Trump slightly more strongly this year than in the 2016 Iowa caucuses: CNN entrance polls showed a modest 3% jump in caucus-goers under 30 who support Trump, while his share of supporters over the age of 30 nearly doubled across the board.Since 2016, Trump has consolidated support among evangelical Christian voters, a key block in Iowa. Just over 20% of Trump’s Iowa supporters in 2016 self-reported as evangelicals or born-again Christians; evangelicals made up 53% of his supporters in 2024 Iowa polling.Support for Trump among evangelical Christians can be chalked up to “transactional politics” said Anne Nelson, author of Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right.Their support may be puzzling on the surface – Trump, a philandering and corrupt adulterer twice divorced who is not particularly religious, would seem an unlikely candidate for wide support from the devout. But behind the scenes, leaders in the evangelical movement, including influential members of the Southern Baptist church, struck a deal with Trump in 2016. In exchange for the support and endorsements of church leaders, Trump would afford evangelicals institutional power in his administration. Through an evangelical advisory board, they would help set social policy and do whatever they could to end the legal right to abortion.Leaders in the church, in exchange, crafted a message that would make Trump more palatable to members.To evangelicals, “Trump was not a man of God,” said Nelson. “He was an instrument of God, like King Cyrus, the Persian king in the Bible.”The bargain held: Trump won the support of evangelical voters and then delivered to them a supreme court that overturned Roe v Wade, erasing nearly 50 years of legal precedent that guaranteed the right to abortion.And despite political divisions among prominent pastors in Iowa, support for Trump among evangelical voters increased this year.The Iowa primary may be a reasonable bellwether for evangelical support for him – and as far as it served as a litmus test for Republican party polling, the polling held up. But Iowa’s primary is atypical.Iowa is more racially homogeneous than the rest of the US – more than 85% of Iowans identify as white, and Black people make up only about 4% of the population, compared with the national average of 71% and 12%. While Black men across the US have increasingly reported supporting Trump in polling, there were so few non-white Republican caucus-goers that entrance polling did not register them as a statistically significant bloc.The Republican caucuses are also party meetings, requiring party membership to participate and consisting of an exclusively in-person vote.The time commitment, the fact that caucuses also involve Republican party business, and even the extreme cold in Iowa this week probably affected turnout, which was estimated at 110,000 voters, significantly lower than 2016.“The proportion of rank-and-file Republicans who are going to participate in the caucuses would be fewer than in a typical primary,” said Barbara Trish, a professor of political science at Grinnell College in Iowa.“The smaller the core of participants, the more likely they are to be more ideologically extreme, or more, on average, experienced and active in the party.”The next stop to test the strength and growth of Trump’s base is New Hampshire, which is also demographically less diverse than most of the country and thus not representative of what the US election as a whole will look like. Even so, Trump is predicted to win the state, further cement his monopoly of the party, and box out those who threaten it. More

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      Trump Won 98 of Iowa’s 99 Counties, as Haley Prevented a Shutout

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      Former President Donald J. Trump won 98 of 99 counties in the Iowa caucuses on Monday, according to preliminary results published by the state Republican Party, demonstrating just how broadly he swept the first-in-the-nation contest.In counties large and small, Mr. Trump racked up commanding leads across the state. In the only county he lost, it was by a single vote: Johnson County, the state’s bluest county and the home of Iowa City and the University of Iowa, went for former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina.Shut out from a single victory was Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who had banked his candidacy on Iowa and put enormous effort into campaigning in rural, sparsely populated areas. He visited every one of Iowa’s 99 counties in the months before the caucuses, a tour known as the “Full Grassley,” and was rewarded on Monday with second- and third-place finishes from Sioux City to Davenport.Vivek Ramaswamy, the pro-Trump entrepreneur who dropped out on Monday after receiving just 7 percent of the vote in Iowa, had visited all 99 counties at least twice, a strategy that did not deliver the surprise performance he had been brashly predicting for months.Mr. Trump in contrast had put far less effort into circuiting the state and indulging in the kind of retail politics that Iowa campaigning is known for. He also had surrogates do much of the campaigning for him until the final week before the caucuses.After battling fiercely for second place in the race’s final weeks, Ms. Haley finished third overall in Iowa on Monday night. Her lone bright spot, albeit narrowly, was Johnson County. In his 2020 re-election campaign, Mr. Trump lost the county with just 27 percent of the vote, to over 70 percent for Joseph R. Biden Jr.Ms. Haley had been expected to do better in more populous urban and suburban areas — much like Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who eight years ago won significant margins in the counties of Des Moines, its suburbs and Iowa City, as he, too, came in third place.But turnout fell sharply across the state this year, the lowest since the Republican caucuses in 2000, and urban counties lost thousands of votes. In the end, Ms. Haley fell far short in Iowa’s largest cities, losing by wide margins to Mr. Trump — and sometimes behind Mr. DeSantis — in the counties that include Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Davenport and Sioux City. More

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      Trump Left Iowa With Momentum and a Court Date

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      Also, the U.S. struck Houthi targets for a third time. Here’s the latest at the end of Tuesday.The Iowa caucuses could hardly have gone better for Donald Trump. The former president won the first presidential nominating contest by 30 percentage points — more than double the record in the state’s competitive Republican races. His dominance codified, yet again, his double-fisted hold on the Republican electorate.Now the race moves on to New Hampshire, where next week’s primary is perhaps the last clear chance for one of Trump’s rivals to slow him. Nikki Haley has banked on independents there, and one poll this month showed her at 32 percent, just seven points behind Trump. But her third-place showing in Iowa suggested that Ron DeSantis would continue challenging her, despite lacking a clear path forward.“If you have two serious opponents running against him, there’s virtually no chance of beating him for the nomination,” my colleague Shane Goldmacher said, adding that yesterday’s result was “basically exactly what the Trump campaign would have hoped for.”All three leading candidates have events tonight in New Hampshire. But first, Trump stopped in Manhattan for the opening day of a trial in a suit filed against him by E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of defaming her after she accused him of rape. His decision to appear, under no obligation, reflected his effort to use the legal threats against him to energize his supporters.Houthi fighters held a rally near Sana, Yemen, on Sunday against strikes by the U.S. and Britain.Associated PressThe U.S. struck Houthi targets for a third timeU.S. forces carried out a strike today against Houthi anti-ship ballistic missiles in Yemen, according to military officials. It was the third attack against the Iran-backed rebel group since a U.S.-led air and naval barrage that hit dozens of targets last week.The strikes, which targeted four missiles that were being prepared to be fired, came after the Houthis launched a new round of attacks in critical shipping lanes. The group attempted to hit an American warship on Sunday, damaged a U.S.-owned commercial ship yesterday and hit a Greek bulk carrier today. Houthi leaders have said they will continue their attacks until Israel withdraws from Gaza.In Gaza, Qatar said Israel and Hamas had reached a deal to allow additional aid into Gaza in exchange for the delivery of medication to Israeli hostages.Also, Israel has been surprised by the extent and quality of the tunnel network beneath Gaza. They now believe there are far more than they once thought: between 350 and 450 miles of tunnels.Supporters of extending the child tax credit in 2022.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesLawmakers struck a bipartisan tax dealTop Democrats and Republicans in Congress announced today that they had reached a $78 billion compromise to partly extend a major pandemic expansion of the child tax credit, which cut child poverty rates nearly in half in 2021, and restore three popular expired business tax breaks. The deal would be financed by reining in the pandemic-era employee retention tax credit.Yet the rare bipartisan agreement, spanning both chambers, still faces steep obstacles in a Congress laboring to tackle the basic work of funding the government. Some House Democrats have argued that the legislation should do more to expand the child tax credit, while several Senate Republicans have voiced resistance.A courtyard in Fort Worth, yesterday. Desiree Rios for The New York TimesIt’s cold in the Deep SouthA blast of Arctic air reached into the Deep South today, breaking low-temperature records, while the Midwest and the Great Plains faced dangerous below-zero wind chill temperatures. Even New York received its first significant snowfall in almost two years.Another Arctic blast is expected to begin by the end of the week. See what you are in for, and follow these steps to protect yourself and your home.More top newsBusiness: A judge blocked JetBlue’s $3.8 billion proposal to buy Spirit Airlines, agreeing with the Justice Dept. that the merger would hurt competition.Courts: A lawsuit claimed that James Dolan, the mogul behind Madison Square Garden and the New York Knicks, pressured a woman into unwanted sex.Tech: Elon Musk demanded that Tesla’s board give him shares worth more than $80 billion if it wants him to work on artificial intelligence.Nigeria: Shell said that it had agreed to sell its onshore oil and gas business to a group dominated by local companies for $1.3 billion.New York: The suspect in the Gilgo Beach serial killings was charged with a fourth murder.Supreme Court: Oral arguments are set for tomorrow in a potentially major case that is backed by the billionaire Charles Koch.Business: The World Economic Forum’s annual meeting kicked off in Davos.Finance: Goldman Sachs earned $2 billion in the fourth quarter of last year.Health: Diabetes is fueling a rise in amputations in San Antonio.Pets: A dog from Portugal was honored as the world’s oldest. Now his age is being investigated.Sports: A Welsh rugby star said he is stepping away from the sport to pursue a career in the N.F.L.TIME TO UNWINDJesse Armstrong, the creator of “Succession,” right foreground, accepted the Emmy Award for best drama.Mario Anzuoni/ReutersThe Emmys may have been a send-off for Peak TVLast night’s Emmy Awards, which were dominated by the likes of “Succession” and “The Bear,” felt a touch more nostalgic than most award shows. One reason was the strike-related delays that left several 2022 shows up for honors. Another reason, my colleague John Koblin wrote, is that they felt like a goodbye to the so-called Peak TV era.The days in which streaming services offer an almost endless supply of new programming seem to be coming to an end, John wrote. Luckily, many of the top-quality shows are sticking around.Best dressed? Pick out your favorite outfit from the award show.Keith NegleyLearning a language may help stave off dementiaResearch suggests that speaking multiple languages can delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease by up to five years. Having to inhibit your mother tongue, in theory, makes the brain more resilient to the impairments caused by diseases like dementia.It’s not clear whether casually following a language app confers the same cognitive advantage. But the regularity with which you use the second language appears to be more important than when you learn it.Sabato De Sarno introduced his first Gucci collection for men.Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDinner table topicsGucci’s reboot: The label’s new creative director ditched his predecessor’s pussy bows and brought back some old-school cool.The Ozempic age: The food industry has long marketed its products as impossible to resist. Has that lost its selling power?Text bubbles: Group chats have quietly become the de facto spaces for everything: sharing dumb jokes, grieving or even planning for an insurrection.A reader asked: How much water do I really need to drink every day?WHAT TO DO TONIGHTLinda Xiao for The New York TimesCook: This pimento cheese pie will become a fast favorite for parties.Watch: The season finale of “Fargo” is tonight. Here’s what else is on TV this week.Read: Kyle Chayka’s new book considers how technology has narrowed our choices.Listen: Check out Ariana Grande’s new track, and nine more songs worth listening to.Nourish: We have tips for making sure you eat enough fruits and vegetables.Replace: If you have any of these 17 household items, it might be time for a new one.Compete: Take this week’s Flashback history quiz.Play: Here are today’s Spelling Bee, Wordle and Mini Crossword. Find all our games here.ONE LAST THINGThe Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo in 2014.Noritaka Minami, via SFMOMAA second life for an architectural marvelIt’s been 50 years since the Nakagin Capsule Tower was erected in Tokyo. Back then, it looked like something out of a science-fiction film: a futuristic tower composed of 140 detachable, single-resident capsules with porthole windows, like a pile of eyes fixed on the city.Now it’s gone. After years of neglect, the pods were pulled down one by one in 2022. Only 23 of them could be salvaged. But those orphaned puzzle pieces are embarking on another life across Japan and the world as art spaces, museum pieces and even holiday accommodations.Have an enduring evening.Thanks for reading. I’ll be back tomorrow. — MatthewWe welcome your feedback. Write to us at evening@nytimes.com. More

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      With the fake drama of the Iowa caucuses over, we can focus on Trump’s real dangers | Osita Nwanevu

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      There were no surprises out of Iowa. Donald Trump had led the state’s polls by about 30 points and current tallies suggest that he’s won by about that much.The voters who braved the bitter cold to officially kick off the Republican primary were, plainly, exactly the ones the former president needed and wanted – ABC’s entrance polls registered immigration and the economy as their top issues and additionally found that 63% of caucus-goers would consider Trump fit for the presidency even if he were convicted of a crime. All of this was predictable; all of it suggests that the time and energy the candidates and the media alike have spent hyping up this first contest ⁠– and perhaps this primary campaign as a whole ⁠– have been mostly wasted.There was a bit of manufactured drama over the question of whether Trump would win the caucuses by at least 50%, in keeping with his standing in the pre-caucus polls – a metric Haley took a particular interest in given that Trump’s “underperformance” on that score might narratively lay the groundwork for a potential upset in New Hampshire.But it’s been widely forgotten that Trump actually lost Iowa back in 2016 as a much weaker candidate before going on to take the nomination. He’s doing well enough in the national polls ⁠– with the support of more than 60% of the Republican electorate ⁠– that losing New Hampshire won’t be fatal for him and losing Iowa altogether likely wouldn’t have been either.If it was ever in the cards, Trump’s defeat in the primaries was never going to be a matter of dominoes tipping away after a crucial loss ⁠– without a campaign and a message that can capture a meaningful share of the voters Trump has held in thrall since taking the presidency nearly eight years ago, his opponents were never going to succeed. And right now they appear no closer to hitting upon the right approach.Ron DeSantis, who needed a respectable finish in Iowa and seems to have edged Haley out for second place at time of writing, has been grasping for one even more desperately than usual in recent days. With the grim resignation of a man with nothing left to lose, he even tried telling the truth. On Friday, he called out Fox News and the rest of the conservative press for protecting Trump and denouncing his critics; he followed this up on Sunday with an uncharacteristically pointed critique of Trump’s narcissism.“You can be the strongest, most dynamic, successful Republican and conservative in America, but [if] you don’t kiss that ring, then he’ll try to trash you,” DeSantis told a crowd on Sunday. “You deserve a nominee that’s going to put you first, not himself.”There’s been some talk about whether airing these critiques of Trump earlier on might have boosted DeSantis’s candidacy, but the actual course of the primary suggests DeSantis would have wound up in the Republican party’s marginalized anti-Trump minority with Nikki Haley, at best, or found himself an also-ran like Chris Christie at worst. Trying to be all things to all the party’s constituencies at once seems to have worked out better for him, but not well enough to put a real dent in Trump’s standing.As such, Trump is still on a glide path to the nomination; as the press absorbs that fact, we might finally see more sustained attention to what he’s been saying and promising to voters. His recent comments about immigrants “poisoning the blood of the country” and Washington DC have raised some of the old alarms, though reporting on the ground suggests this rhetoric isn’t lighting the same fires among Trump supporters that it used to.“He relies on a shorthand legible only to his most dedicated followers, and his tendency to get lost in rhetorical cul-de-sacs of self-pity and anger wears thin,” the Atlantic’s McKay Coppins recently observed in a piece on his latest rallies. “This doesn’t necessarily make him less dangerous. There is a rote quality now to his darkest rhetoric that I found more unnerving than when it used to command wall-to-wall news coverage.”His rhetoric may well command that kind of attention again soon, but the incentives that drove eyes away from Trump will be in play for a little while longer as these early races continue. The political press thrives on uncertainty and will create some uncertainty where none really exists; there remains too, among Trump’s Republican critics and political reporters alike, a drive to convince the country and themselves that the conservative movement is, even now, more than a cult of personality.And it is, really: Trump is the product of currents on the right that long preceded him and will live on after he leaves the political stage, whenever that might be. He’s simply channeled them far more effectively than his challengers ⁠– so much more so that he remains the party’s likely nominee.
      Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist More