Iowa

Good morning. Last night, the race for the US presidency formally started – and Donald Trump has won the first round by a landslide. With 99% of votes counted, Trump has 51% of Republican support in the Iowa caucus – a victory of unprecedented dominance for any race not involving a sitting president.Ron DeSantis got 21% of votes, a very distant second place that he tried to present as a success – while Nikki Haley finished a disappointing third with 19% but claimed she now had the momentum to challenge Trump. In truth, though, the result is so decisive that it’s all but impossible to see anyone but Trump taking the nomination from here.Today’s newsletter, with the Guardian’s David Smith at the Trump victory party in Des Moines, explains what the results in Iowa mean for each of the three leading Republican campaigns. Here are the headlines.Five big stories
Conservatives | Rishi Sunak is facing a Conservative meltdown over the Rwanda deportation bill after two deputy chairs said they would support rebel amendments aimed at blocking international human rights laws. Lee Anderson and Brendan Clarke-Smith have defied the prime minister by backing rightwing challenges to the bill, which will be debated by parliament on Tuesday.
Middle East crisis | The Houthi militia group has continued to attack commercial shipping, hitting an American-owned container ship with a ballistic missile in defiance of US and UK strikes on Yemen. While the strike caused no major damage, it will add to fears that the militia group retains the ability to threaten commercial shipping.
Rail strikes | Train drivers have called a further week of rolling strikes across England from late January in their long-running dispute with operators over pay. Members of the Aslef union will strike for 24 hours at each train-operating company on the national railway on different days between Tuesday 30 January and Monday 5 February.
Security | Hizb ut-Tahrir will be banned from organising in the UK following claims that the group is antisemitic, the home secretary has said. The Islamist group is already banned in several countries including Germany and Indonesia.
Emmys | Beef, The Bear and the final season of Succession reigned supreme at the delayed 2023 Emmy awards. Jesse Armstrong’s hit HBO drama picked up six awards, including for actors Kieran Culkin, Sarah Snook and Matthew Macfadyen and the night’s biggest award for best drama series. See the red carpet fashion and a full list of winners.
In depth: In freezing weather, Trump wins by an avalancheWith Joe Biden secure as the Democratic nominee, this year’s primary calendar is only about one thing: who will be his Republican challenger. The answer to that question already looks pretty obvious, and the Iowa caucus did nothing to dispel it. But after months of the phoney campaign, the first real results do have important things to tell us about the state of the race – and whether those in the Republican party who don’t want Trump can unite behind an alternative.One minor piece of housekeeping before the main event: Trump tribute act Vivek Ramaswamy finished fourth with 8% of the vote and dropped out. “Nobody knew who we were, nobody knew what we were up to,” he said. A fitting political obituary.A ‘perfect night’ for Donald TrumpIn the run-up to Iowa, Trump’s campaign argued that any victory by 13 points or more would be a historic success: the biggest previous victory was Bob Dole’s 12.8-point margin in 1988. That was a very low bar to set given polls placed him 30 points ahead of the pack, and he cleared it by a distance last night.“I don’t think there was much question beforehand, but it looks even more certain now,” said David Smith. “He won 98 out of 99 counties, and he only lost to Haley by one vote in the other. He won the middle class suburbs where he might traditionally struggle against someone more moderate. It was a perfect night for Trump – it’s all over bar the shouting.”David was at Trump’s election watch party in a cavernous conference centre. “He won so quickly that hardly anyone was there when it was announced,” he said. “So you didn’t get the customary big cheer.” When his supporters did get in, they celebrated with popcorn and beer alongside Maga hardliners like Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene – as well as Nigel Farage.Iowa’s Republican voters are among the most socially conservative in the US, but Trump’s margin is so vast that there’s no obvious route for either of his main opponents to make up the difference elsewhere. “You can make the case that this is a home fixture for him in some ways, and it will be a bit tougher next week in New Hampshire – but it swings back towards him very quickly after that,” David said.His win came despite his refusal to participate in debates with Republican rivals and a less intense campaign in Iowa than Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley ran. Although he has a more professional ground operation than he did in 2016, Trump has spent much less time in the state this time around. (He made just 18 visits in 2023, against dozens for his main rivals.) “He broke the rules of retail politics in Iowa,” David said. “But strategically it was very successful. Staying away from the debates helped enforce the impression of inevitability.” Starting this week, the Trump on Trial newsletter will bring daily analysis and weekly previews of the developments in the legal cases against the Republican presidential candidate. Sign up here.DeSantis beats the polls – but still gets trouncedOn Sunday, DeSantis (above) asked his supporters: “Are you ready to make some history on Monday night?” Finishing a distant second to Trump is hardly an epochal event – but it just about does enough to keep his campaign alive, and DeSantis will now claim to have momentum heading into the New Hampshire primary next week. He told supporters: “They threw everything but the kitchen sink at us … [but] we’ve got our ticket punched out of Iowa.”In recent polls, the Florida governor has been behind Nikki Haley by several percentage points. But the always-unpredictable Iowa caucus process, in which voters listen to pitches from the candidates’ representatives before casting their ballots, was further complicated by freezing temperatures that depressed turnout – expected to finish at about 110,000 voters, against 187,000 in 2016 and the lowest in almost a quarter of a century.That appears to have benefited DeSantis, who has a well-funded get-out-the-vote operation in Iowa. “He lives to fight another day,” said David. “He worked very hard in the state, and he may have been helped by the extraordinarily cold weather. Polls for the Iowa caucus are often wrong – a lot of people I spoke to tonight before the first results came in expected him to finish second.”Even so, the DeSantis campaign remains in dire straits. “In the end it is pretty soul-crushing for him,” David said. “He went to all 99 counties, and lost within half an hour.” In 2022, he appeared to hold a promising position as “Trump without the baggage” – a candidate who could carry the former president’s ultra-conservative agenda on immigration, gun rights and culture war issues without the same accompanying chaos in the White House.But refusing to criticise Trump for months in the hope that his adversary would ultimately implode on his own has made him appear weak to voters who value strength above all – and basically pointless: “The people who want Trump don’t need a mini-me Trump,” former Republican congresswoman Barbara Comstock pointed out in August. Finishing ahead of Haley does little to dispel that fundamental dynamic.Haley falls short and leaves the field dividedThe former governor of South Carolina (above) has sought to present herself as the most electable Republican candidate in a general election, pointing to a recent Wall Street Journal poll that showed her 17 points ahead of Biden when voters are asked to choose between the two. In November, an endorsement and $4m from Americans for Prosperity, an immensely powerful libertarian political campaign group founded by the billionaire Koch brothers, gave crucial credibility to her attempt to cement herself as the alternative to Trump.But last night’s results are a devastating blow to that argument. She told supporters: “I can safely say tonight Iowa made this Republican primary a two-person race.” As David noted: “That’s a pretty unusual claim for the person who finished third.”Haley is likely to continue to New Hampshire, where she is second to Trump in recent polls by the relatively narrow margin of 11 points. The good news for Trump is that the narrow difference between her and DeSantis, together with her slightly better position in New Hampshire, means that neither is likely to drop out. “That’s the icing on the cake for Trump,” David said. “It blunts her momentum ahead of New Hampshire.”Although she entered politics as part of the proto-Maga Tea Party movement, Haley rejects Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and rivals have sought to portray her as too liberal to win the Republican nomination. While she largely echoes Trump on immigration, she has rejected policies like the separation of families at the border. She has focused on her foreign policy experience as Trump’s ambassador to the UN, and promised to find a compromise on abortion.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn the end, though, a candidate whose main appeal was electability appears likely to be fatally harmed by doing so badly in an actual vote. “If she had pulled off second, the landscape would look pretty different,” David said. “There would be a conversation about her as the challenger, and whether DeSantis is going to pull out. But instead, this looks like an illustration of fractured opposition. Neither Haley or DeSantis has ever really escaped the shadow of Trump to build their own political identities.”What else we’ve been reading
David Smith spoke with Raymond Arsenault, the author of the first full-length biography of the late congressman and civil rights giant John Lewis (above, left). They discuss Lewis’s life, his guiding values of compassion, reconciliation and forgiveness that informed his politics and his storied career in Congress. Nimo
After the Daily Telegraph published an opinion poll yesterday that suggested the Conservatives are heading for a 1997-style landslide defeat, Paul Goodman, the editor of ConservativeHome, has a perceptive piece on who’s behind it – and why it’s come out now. Archie
By 2030, the global population will be older than it ever has been: one in six people will be over the age of 60. This touching and thoughtful photo essay by Ed Kashi, Ilvy Njiokiktjien, and Sara Terry documents the daily lives of 72-year-olds from around the world. Nimo
Julian Baggini reflects on the rare consensus that has emerged around the Post Office scandal – and warns that very few injustices are likely to be so easily understood. “There has been something cathartic about this collective show of anger,” he writes. “But it is not always as easy as this to side with the angels.” Archie
Dominic Sessa’s original plan in high school was to become a professional hockey player but a broken femur forced him to change course. His new plan was to act. Sessa spoke to Adrian Horton about the chance audition that led him to the opportunity of a lifetime. Nimo
SportTennis | Andy Murray (above) admitted that there is a “definite possibility” that he has played his last Australian Open after the five-time finalist suffered his most sobering grand-slam defeat since returning from hip surgery. Murray lost 6-4, 6-2, 6-2 to Tomás Martín Etcheverry, the 30th seed, in the first round of the Australian Open. Follow live coverage of day three here.Football | Aitana Bonmatí said she was “proud” to be part of a generation of women “changing the game and the world” as the Spain World Cup star claimed the title of the Best Fifa women’s player for 2023 at a star-studded award ceremony in London. Lionel Messi won the men’s award for a third time, narrowly pipping Erling Haaland to the prize.Football | Nottingham Forest are facing a potential points deduction after being charged with breaching the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR), and Everton could lose more points after being charged with a further breach of the same rules. Will Unwin’s analysis explains the spending spree that put Forest in the dock.The front pages“Defiant Houthis attack cargo ship as conflict widens in Middle East” is the headline on our Guardian print lead this morning. “Name calling” – the Daily Mirror leads with the royals and the Queen’s apparent posthumous vent about Lilibet-gate. The i has “Migrants taken off first Rwanda flight still in asylum hotels 18 months later” while the Daily Telegraph reports “Tory deputy chairmen to rebel over Rwanda Bill”. The Daily Express and the Daily Mail seek to rally Rishi Sunak – respectively, their headlines are “PM: I’ll defy Euro judges who block Rwanda flights” and “PM: I will defy Euro judges on Rwanda flights”. The Times reports “Sunak will speed Rwanda appeals in sop to rebels”. The Metro says “Child sex scandal report … 96 Rochdale groomers still free”. Top story in the Financial Times is “Better governance and IT would save £20bn a year, says spending watchdog”.Today in FocusWill South Africa’s genocide case against Israel succeed?South Africa has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza at hearings in the international court of justice. Chris McGreal reports on what happens nextCartoon of the day | Ben JenningsThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badDuring the pandemic, Henry Jephson, head of research at the Bristol Fungarium, came across a lion’s mane, a rare type of mushroom which is under threat in the UK. Jephson’s sighting of the enormous shaggy specimen was the first in eight years in south-west England, so he was shocked to see that the landowner had felled its host tree, smashing the mushroom in the process. The experience accelerated a shift in the focus of his work to conservation of native fungi alongside Natural England and the Royal Horticultural Society. Jephson now helps run a mushroom farm, which has pivoted from growing commercial mushrooms to conserving natural, wild mushrooms and creating health supplements from them.Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every SundayBored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
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It’s a bracing day in Iowa as the caucus gatherings approach later on Monday, and there are other items of US politics news occurring too, all brought to you as they happen. We are here, live, to bring you all the events.Here’s where things stand:
Economy, border, foreign policy are key issues as Iowans head to caucus, with Republican voters in the Hawkeye state saying these themes are top of mind as they prepare to caucus tonight in the US’s first nominating contest.
Donald Trump has stepped up his attacks on Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis on the morning of the day Iowans go to vote on their Republican candidate.
The Pentagon said the US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, has been released from hospital today. Austin, 70, had been hospitalized since 1 January due to complications after prostate cancer treatment, but there was uproar because he didn’t tell the White House (or many others) about it.
Iowa Republicans will brave brutally cold temperatures on Monday evening to participate in the state’s presidential caucuses, as Donald Trump remains the clear frontrunner in the race for his party’s nomination. The final results will depend on turnout, which could be acutely impacted by the weather.
Iowans have been told to “limit outdoor exposure” as much as possible with forecasters saying the wind chill temperature could go down to as low as -35F on Monday evening in the “dangerous cold”.
The 2024 US presidential election begins in earnest in Iowa today. The final Des Moines Register/NBC News poll before Monday night’s caucuses found former president, Donald Trump, maintaining a formidable lead over his opponents, supported by 48% of likely caucus-goers. After trailing the two-term Florida governor, Ron DeSantis for months, the latest poll showed Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, in second place in Iowa, winning the support of 20% of likely Republican caucus-goers, compared to DeSantis’s 16%, with Vivek Ramaswamy at 8%.
Donald Trump Jr and girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle are running very late for a campaign stop at a bar in Ankeny, Iowa. “Do you think we’ll still make it to the caucus?” one anxious supporter asked the Guardian.Patiently hanging on is Blake Marnell, 59, who works in sales and lives in San Diego, California. He is one of the peculiar characters thrown up by the Trump era: he is wearing his trademark brick-patterned suit, a symbol of his support for Trump’s border wall, along with a “Maga” cap signed by Trump.He says the suit was marketed in Britain for stag parties and he bought it off the internet. “These are suits made for bachelor parties in London where the lads all want to go out for a night drinking but the dress code at the club says you must wear suits, so there’s this industry of semi-disposable suits with garish patterns.”Marnell estimates he has been to between 35 and 40 Trump rallies and confidently predicts the former president will win the Iowa caucuses. “I believe President Trump will win. I think everybody knows that so the real question is by how much? If you go by polling, I think that he will be over 50%.”The “Brick Man” is also looking forward to seeing the president’s eldest son in action soon. “He’s an excellent speaker for President Trump, for his father, because one thing that a lot of President Trump’s surrogates don’t have but Donald Trump Jr does have is they share the same sense of humour: at times irreverent, at times offensive to some people, at times perhaps people might think it’s a little bit too much, but if you’re a fan of President Trump and his humour, you’re also going to be a fan of Don Jr.“The politician that supports President Trump won’t have the freedom or the latitude to say things because they have to worry about their constituency back home and how that impacts their office. Donald Trump Jr? No filters. He can say what he wants to say. He can say what he’s feeling and people understand that and they gravitate towards him.”Vice-President Kamala Harris said “freedom is under profound threat” in a speech in South Carolina to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr Day.The vice-president spoke as Republicans campaigned around Iowa in the final push to sway voters before the caucus began this evening. Democrats aren’t holding an Iowa caucus this year, after shifting their calendar to make South Carolina the first official primary because Iowa and New Hampshire’s voters don’t represent the diversity of the party. Republicans set their Iowa caucus on MLK day to maintain its status as the first election contest, but the fact that it was a federal holiday didn’t seem to enter into the decision.Harris cited MLK’s iconic “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, where the civil rights leader wrote that “the goal of America is freedom”.“And so, as we gather to honor his legacy, I pose a question I believe Dr. King would today ask: In 2024, where exactly is America in our fight for freedom?…As Vice President of the United States, I’d say: At this moment, in America, freedom is under profound threat,” she said.Speaking at an NAACP event, Harris sought to make the case that supporting Democrats in this year’s elections would protect freedoms in the wake of attacks on reproductive rights, book bans and voting rights. She implored attendees to join the fight against these restrictions by voting blue in 2024.“This generation now has fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers,” she said. “It is not hypothetical that from kindergarten to 12th grade, this generation has had to endure active shooter drills. Our children, who should be in a classroom fulfilling their God-given potential and exploring their wonder for the beauty of the world, instead have to worry that someone might burst through their classroom door with a gun. It is not hypothetical. When students go to vote, they often have to wait in line for hours because of laws that intentionally make it more difficult for them to cast a ballot.”Shortly after that, the Biden campaign’s press conference wrapped up.We’re now four hours away from the start of the Republican caucuses in Iowa’s 99 counties, and you can expect the Biden campaign will speak up again once their choice becomes clear.JB Pritzker was asked about Joe Biden’s persistent unpopularity.The president’s approval rating has been underwater for more than two-and-a-half years, and has lately lurked in the low 40% range. The factors behind this trend are myriad and include Biden’s advanced age as well as the hangover from the record inflation Americans experienced in 2022, but the trend has been enough to make many Democrats nervous about his bid to win another four years in the White House.Pritzker argued that polls don’t yet reflect the reality of the presidential race, since the Republican nominee hasn’t yet been decided.“Until we see that we won’t know really what the numbers are,” the governor said (though many pollsters have surveyed how the president would perform against various Republicans, including Donald Trump, who some polls have found voters prefer.)
But I can tell you this, that it’s Joe Biden that’s delivered for the American public, it’s Joe Biden that’s got an awful lot to brag about, and I think the dangers that are posed by this Republican field will be well known to people once … one of them is chosen.
Jeffrey Katzenberg, a movie mogul who is co-chairing the national advisory board for Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, is talking up the mammoth fundraising haul the president received in the final quarter of last year.“Last quarter, Team Biden Harris raised more than $97m and reported $117m of cash on hand,” Katzenberg said.
It means team Biden-Harris is entering the election year with more cash on hand than any democratic candidate in history.
He said the Biden campaign’s financial firepower now dwarfs his Republican rivals, no matter who that may be, and allows them to focus their efforts on winning the November general election. Katzenberg said:
Republicans are spending money in a race for the Maga base without a single dime going towards the voters who will ultimately decide the general election. By the time they are finished with the primary and Donald Trump or whichever extremists is finally in a position where they can start trying to compete with us, it’s just going to be too late.
The Minnesota senator Tina Smith laid into the Republican field, saying all the candidates had plans to cut off access to abortion.
We know one thing for sure. Every one of these extremist candidates is attacking women’s freedom to make their own decisions about abortion. These extreme Republican candidates want a national ban on abortion, and that is what they will try to do if given the chance.
The reality is that none of these candidates trust women to make their own decisions about abortion because they believe that they know and that is why we cannot trust them to be president.
The Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, is up at the podium first, and saying that all Republican candidates competing in tonight’s caucus are ignoring the country’s needs and espousing extremist policies. Pritzker said:
Here we stand on Martin Luther King Jr Day, and this field of candidates is espousing Adolf Hitler’s ideas, denying that … the civil war was about slavery, or demonizing and discounting the rights of large groups of Americans. All of these Republican candidates are singing the same, terrible song.
In an apparent reference to Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and sole woman in the Republican race, and the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, who has been accused of wearing footwear that boosts his stature, Pritzker said:
Tonight’s contest is simply a question of whether you like your Maga Trump agenda wrapped in the original packaging with high heels, or with lifts in their boots.
While everyone will be watching who Iowa Republicans select as their nominee tonight, Joe Biden’s re-election campaign is in town to, in their words, “remind voters what’s at stake this November as Donald Trump and Maga Republicans launch an all-out assault on Americans’ freedoms”.They’ve got some Democratic heavy hitters speaking to the press this afternoon at the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines, including the Illinois governor JB Pritzker, the Minnesota senator Tina Smith and Jeffrey Katzenberg, co-chair of the Biden-Harris campaign’s national advisory board.I am in the room and will let you know what they have to say.Precinct captains in Iowa will try to persuade caucus voters tonight to pick their preferred candidate, a practice common to the Iowa caucuses but not typical of US elections otherwise.Candidates work to have volunteer caucus captains at all precinct voting sites, usually local schools or community gathering places. Those captains whip votes at the precinct, speechifying and debating with voters who are unsure who to vote for or could be swayed from one candidate to another.Outside the caucus process, it’s usually illegal to actively campaign at a polling site.This year, Trump’s precinct captains are donning white hats with “Trump Caucus Captain” written in gold lettering. The hats were given to 2,000 caucus captains and have become “the hottest item in Maga world”, Politico reported.The precinct captains, while their role is important on caucus day, are typically regular Iowa voters who volunteer to help their preferred candidate because they’re passionate about that person winning. They’re often seen as people who can influence their neighbors at the hyperlocal precinct sites.Sometimes, the New York Times writes in its feature about caucus captains, the captains can be more high-profile. “One of Ron DeSantis’s captains is a former co-chairman of the Iowa Republican Party, and one of Nikki Haley’s is a state senator,” the paper notes.Climate activists from the Sunrise Movement protested outside a diner near Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, where Nikki Haley was addressing supporters today. More