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    Trump Wins Iowa, and Iceland’s Volcanic Eruption

    The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about five minutes.Former President Donald J. Trump’s sweep of the Iowa caucuses was broad and deep.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOn Today’s Episode:5 Takeaways From Trump’s Runaway Victory in the Iowa Caucuses, by Lisa Lerer, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan SwanWhat to Know as Trump Faces Another Defamation Trial by E. Jean Carroll, by Benjamin Weiser and Maggie Haberman, with Maria CramerSenate to Vote on Potential Freeze to Israel Aid as Democrats Question Conduct of War, by Karoun DemirjianU.S. Defense Secretary Is Released From the Hospital After 2 Weeks, by Eric SchmittIceland Faces ‘New Chapter’ of Seismic Activity as Lava Menaces Town, by Egill Bjarnason and Emma Bubola75th Emmy Awards Ceremony: ‘Succession’ Wins Emmy for Best Drama and ‘The Bear’ Best Comedy, by John KoblinJessica Metzger and More

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    Trump’s Domination and the Battle for No. 2 in Iowa

    Mary Wilson, Clare Toeniskoetter and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicAt the Iowa Republican caucuses on Monday night, Donald J. Trump secured a runaway victory. The only real drama was the fight for second place.Reid Epstein, who covers politics for The Times, takes us inside one of the caucuses, and Shane Goldmacher, a national political reporter, walks us through the final results.On today’s episodeReid J. Epstein, a politics correspondent for The New York Times.Shane Goldmacher, a national political reporter for The New York Times.Ron DeSantis speaking in West Des Moines, Iowa, on Monday. Despite an expensive canvassing and voter-turnout operation, he returned a lackluster result.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesBackground readingA letdown for Ron DeSantis: His campaign is running low on cash and faces tough tests ahead.Why coming in second can be a win in early-state contests.Here are five takeaways from Trump’s crushing victory.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Reid J. Epstein More

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    Trump wins in Iowa as Republican contest kicks off 2024 presidential race – video

    Donald Trump won the US’s first election contest of 2024, easily fending off a field of Republicans who failed to gain traction against the former US president. The result for Trump was called quickly, while the battle for second place took much longer, with Ron DeSantis edging out Nikki Haley in an upset. Vivek Ramaswamy led the lesser-known pack of contenders, before he dropped out of the Republican nomination race and endorsed Trump More

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    Even the Battle for Second Turned Out Well for Trump in Iowa

    A dominant victory and little momentum for his rivals.Donald Trump won by 30 percentage points. Doug Mills/The New York TimesIf there was any question whether Donald J. Trump was on track to win the Republican nomination, it was answered Monday night by the voters of Iowa.The first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses delivered him a sweeping victory, offering the most concrete proof yet of his dominance over the Republican Party.With nearly all the votes counted, Mr. Trump’s share was 51 percent. Ron DeSantis finished a distant second at 21 percent, with Nikki Haley at 19 percent.The result is not surprising or even unexpected, but Mr. Trump’s victory is no small feat. A year ago, Iowa did not look as if it would be easy for the former president. In an upset eight years ago, Iowa voters rejected Mr. Trump in favor of Ted Cruz. And unlike the rest of the country, the Iowa political establishment has refused to get in line behind Mr. Trump.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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    Haley’s Missed Opportunity: Iowa Slows Her Roll Into New Hampshire

    A third-place finish didn’t deliver the boost Nikki Haley wanted as she tries to turn the race into a one-on-one with Donald Trump.Nikki Haley had hoped to vault into New Hampshire ahead of next Tuesday’s first-in-the-nation primary with a head of steam from a second-place finish in Iowa and a powerful case to make that the 2024 nomination fight was a two-candidate race between her and Donald J. Trump.Instead, as Ms. Haley hobbles into New Hampshire, the pressure is on to show she can compete with Mr. Trump.Her disappointing third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses on Monday showed that for all the hype, her momentum ultimately stalled in the face of a Republican electorate still in the thrall of the former president. That included not only Mr. Trump’s working-class base but also the bastions of college-educated Republicans in and around Des Moines that she was supposed to dominate.In her speech after the caucuses, Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, sharpened her attack on Mr. Trump, questioning his age and his ability to unite a fractured country. She lumped Mr. Trump with Mr. Biden as backward-looking barriers to an American revival.“The question before Americans is now very clear: Do you want more of the same or do you want a new generation of conservative leadership?” she asked, drawing loud applause and chants of “Nikki, Nikki.” “Our campaign is the last best hope of stopping the Trump-Biden nightmare.”Still, Ms. Haley’s final tally in Iowa most likely breathed some new life into the campaign of her rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, and indicated that, for all the excitement around her campaign in the closing weeks, her pitch may have limited appeal with Republicans.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 wins big in Iowa as Haley and DeSantis fall short – podcast

    It took just 30 minutes for the Associated Press to project Donald Trump the big winner in Iowa. Trump’s victory was expected, but as the night went on, all eyes were on the real contest – the race for second place. Ron DeSantis came out on top in Iowa, but is projected to fall far behind Nikki Haley in the New Hampshire primary.
    So what happens now? As the majority of Iowans put their faith in Trump, should we just assume he will be the Republican nominee? Can Haley and DeSantis take any positives away from such a poor showing behind the former president? Jonathan Freedland speaks to Joan E Greve, who spoke to him from a Haley caucus event, about all the potential avenues for the remaining candidates

    How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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    Trump won Iowa handily. The idea that he won’t be the nominee is absurd | Moira Donegan

    The journalists came in and issued their ritual dispatches from the bucolic midwest, describing the state in terms heavy on sentiment and light on respect. The candidates poured their money and time into the state, with Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida and one-time favorite for the nomination, betting all his hopes on the state. They persisted through an ominous blizzard and through the punishing cold of a plains winter to make it to the high school gyms and recreation centers where the caucuses took place. And they did all this, made all this effort and expense, in order to change absolutely nothing about the race.Trump won the Iowa caucuses handily; the major networks called for him almost as soon as the doors opened. There was never any question that he wouldn’t, except perhaps in the mind of the most delusional DeSantis aides. Nikki Haley was in a tight race for second against DeSantis, as each pretends that they are in fact really running for president – and not, as anyone can see, for the positions of vice-president and attorney general, respectively. Perhaps because Trump’s fait accompli has no plot and can’t drive ratings, or perhaps because they are in denial, the networks have spent the better part of the past year pretending that there is a legitimate primary contest in the Republican party. There isn’t.In retrospect, the notion that the 2024 Republican nominee would ever have been anyone other than Donald Trump was always a bit absurd. In 2022 and 2023, when large donors, exhausted by Trump, began pouring obscene amounts of money into the DeSantis campaign, the move had a kind of desperate logic. DeSantis had won re-election in Florida by a commanding 19 points; he had used the state to launch himself as an avatar of the racial and gender grievance that had animated many voters’ loyalty to Donald Trump. But DeSantis was supposed to be “Trump without the baggage”. He was a hyper-competent policy wonk who was supposed to be more effective, more focused and less susceptible to flattery, scandal or the distractions of short-term self-interest.But what DeSantis offered voters was Trump’s bevy of resentments without any of Trump’s humor or charisma. On the trail, DeSantis is reptilian and creepy. He has a plaintive, whining affect that makes his hatreds for racial and gender minorities become obviously pathetic, rather than commanding. He has an almost uncanny ability to say the wrong thing. In Iowa, he burned tens of millions of dollars in donor cash, like a dumped prom queen going through tissues. He needed a big win in Iowa, or what would have counted for a big win: a strong, definitive and close second place. He didn’t get it. It was a failure he paid dearly for. Over the past few weeks, DeSantis has been frantically travelling and pressing the flesh: he committed to doing in-person events in each and every one of Iowa’s 99 counties, and evidently has managed to be charmless and off-putting in every corner of the state.Haley, meanwhile, has consolidated much of the “Never Trump” vote, or what’s left of it, all while studiously refusing to criticize Trump much at all. The former president’s advisers have reportedly suggested he seek a woman for VP, to try to counter the political liability of Dobbs. Haley’s campaign for president, such as it is, has been little more than a long audition for this role, one embarked upon with an eager solicitousness that seems almost canine.Trump has long been understood as a morbid symptom of America’s failed institutions. He is what happens when a country takes on the pretext of being a pluralistic democracy without meaningfully politically empowering its historically subordinated populations; he is what happens when republican forms of government coexist with dramatic inequality of wealth; he is what happens when people understand corruption to guide their politicians more than principle, and when the clearly expressed desires of the electorate no longer seem to have any meaningful impact on the policy positions of decision-makers. All of these factors are behind his rise, and all of these factors drove him to victory in Iowa on Monday night with the same determination that they drove him to the nomination in 2016.But what it less clearly understood is why the media and political apparatus that surrounds Trump has been so slow to accommodate the reality he has imposed. The donors flocked to DeSantis in a very expensive kind of denial; the networks covered the challenges as if they were serious; newspapers told us, yet again, that Trump’s appeal must be understood by liberals, as if we have not been made so exhaustively, repetitively aware of Trump and the exact nature of his appeal for the better part of a decade now. As they proclaimed his victory, the news anchors muttered “it’s Donald Trump’s party now”. Just like they’ve done every night since 2016.
    Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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    Tuesday briefing: What Trump’s triumph tells us about the state of the presidential race

    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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