Nikki Haley

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      US election season begins as Iowa Republicans brave cold in first caucuses

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      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 caucuses, set to begin at 7pm CT, mark the first round of voting in the 2024 presidential primary. They will offer the most tangible insight yet into whether any of Trump’s primary opponents, particularly the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, and the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, have managed to diminish his significant polling advantage in the race. Trump has maintained that advantage for months, even as he has been charged with 91 felony counts across four criminal cases.Despite his legal liabilities, Trump still appears well ahead of his fellow Republican candidates in Iowa. According to the latest Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom poll, Trump has the support of 48% of likely Republican caucus-goers, putting him nearly 30 points ahead of Haley at 20%. DeSantis trailed in third place, winning the support of 16% of likely caucus-goers. The other three Republican candidates – the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, the former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson and the businessman Ryan Binkley – languished in the single digits.If polls are accurate, Trump may secure the largest margin of victory in the history of the Iowa Republican caucuses by outperforming Bob Dole’s 13-point win in 1988. The Iowa Republican party announced that it will post results online for the state’s 99 counties.On Monday, the candidates held last-minute events to whip up voters and hopefully increase turnout despite the treacherous winter weather.Trump, for his part, attacked his GOP rivals. He called Haley a “globalist Rino” (Republican in name only) and DeSantis “Maga-lite” and said votes for Ramaswamy were “wasted”.“Nikki is a Globalist RINO, backed by American’s for Chinese Growth, the Charles Koch con job. It’s not going to happen for her, or DeSanctimonious! Vivek Votes are wasted, should come to ‘TRUMP.’ MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.Iowa voters said their top issues were the economy, border security and foreign policy. Despite fears for the future of democracy, Trump supporters said they still believed the 2020 election was stolen and the court cases against Trump would backfire. Polls showed that Trump support could grow if he is indicted. But supporters of other candidates in the Republican contest said they were sick of Trump’s chaos and wanted to move forward.Some voters were still undecided on Monday, and attended events to hear from candidates they might vote for. Caucus captains who volunteer to whip votes for their preferred candidates will work to sway voters to their side at precincts throughout the state on Monday night, a unique feature of Iowa’s caucus (and one typically illegal at polling places in other states).The final results will depend on turnout, which could be acutely impacted by the weather. After a blizzard swept through Iowa on Friday, many roads remained covered in snow as temperatures dropped well below freezing. Trump acknowledged on Saturday that he was concerned about the weather affecting caucus turnout but expressed confidence in his supporters’ dedication.“It’s going to be cold. It’s not going to be pleasant,” DeSantis said at a campaign event in West Des Moines on Saturday. “If you’re willing to brave the elements and be there for the couple hours that you have to be there, if you’re willing to do that and you’re willing to fight for me on Monday night, then as president I’ll be fighting for you for the next eight years.”Even as the National Weather Service warned of “life-threatening” cold, Iowa voters largely shrugged off questions about how they would reach their caucus sites.“People in the country live like this all the time,” said Abbey Sindt, a caucus-goer who attended Haley’s town hall in Ames on Sunday. “So it’s really not that big of a deal, in my opinion.”Max Richardson, who also attended the town hall, agreed with Sindt, saying, “Everyone’s shoveled out. Everyone’s getting the ice melt down. It’s just a question of, can you get the car there?” More

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      Icy battle for democracy in Iowa with Trump expected to win caucuses in an avalanche

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      A cold coming we had of it. Icy winds blow across the plains, numbing the face and cutting to the bone. Stranded cars and tractor trailers lie abandoned at the side of highways. Snow is piled high on the side of every road in the state capital, where giant icicles hang off buildings. Candidates’ yard signs and children’s playgrounds have been enveloped by a white blanket.Welcome to Iowa, often described as the centre of the political universe at this stage of the US electoral cycle, but currently feeling more like the outer reaches of our solar system.It is here, amid wind chills of around -40F (-40C), that Monday will witness the dawn of the 2024 presidential election, the first since the insurrection of 6 January 2021, when US democracy itself hung by a thread.The brutal weather has proved timely for reporters in need of something to talk about ahead of some particularly anti-climactic Iowa caucuses. Democrats are not actively engaged this time, while the Republican race has never been such a foregone conclusion: Donald Trump in an avalanche.The only suspenseful questions on what is expected to be the coldest caucus night ever are: will Trump exceed 50% of the vote and will Nikki Haley, a former US ambassador to the UN, eclipse the one-time rising star Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida?A third place finish could snuff out DeSantis’s singularly joyless effort, which has come to resemble a death march in a state that demands retail politics in its purest form. At an event at his campaign office in a drab building in West Des Moines on Saturday, a Queen hit boomed out from loudspeakers: “Don’t stop me now / I’m having such a good time, I’m having a ball.”The harsh reality is that this is still Trump’s party and neither DeSantis nor Haley managed to stake out their own identity. Chuck Todd, chief political analyst at NBC News, told Meet the Press that Republicans held “robust debates” about their ideological direction in 1964, 1976 and 2016 but not in 2024.“There really isn’t a debate about whether Trumpism is the right direction for the party; the debate is about Trump,” he said. “And I think that’s probably the mistake that Haley and DeSantis – they haven’t figured out how to make the case that Trump’s first term was a failure. You may have liked the issues he focused on, but his inability to solve these problems is why we have the problems we have today. And they seem to be afraid of making that argument.”But there is also a bigger picture, a new test of institutions after years of assault by Trump and the “Make America great again” movement. The Iowa caucuses are the first stop on the long and winding road to an election that will reveal whether the twice impeached, quadruply indicted former president is a historical aberration or destination.Jon Meacham, a presidential historian and informal adviser to Joe Biden, said on the MSNBC network on Sunday: “I think the central question for American democracy at this hour is, are you willing to vote for someone with whom you may differ on policy, but in whose fealty to the constitution you do not doubt? Or do you vote for someone who has demonstrated again and again that he’ll put himself above everything else? Pretty straightforward.”Meacham worries that, after nearly 250 years, the spirit of the declaration of independence and constitution are in grave jeopardy. “I do believe that this experiment needs to go on and I just worry – and I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am given the evidence of the last, what, almost 10 years now – that a re-elected Trump would not only damage that experiment, but he damn well might end it.”There are plenty of reasons to suspect he might be right. A Trump rally at a snowy college campus Indianola on Sunday was shown a now-notorious “God Made Trump” video which claims that the former president is the Almighty’s gift to mankind. Doug Burgum, the North Dakota governor who once said he would not do business with Trump, turned up to endorse him, foreshadowing other spineless Republicans who will surely fold. Honoured guests included the British demagogue Nigel Farage and the self-declared Islamophobe Laura Loomer.Looking on, while shepherding a visiting group of British students, was the veteran political consultant Frank Luntz. To his own surprise and dismay, he would now bet on Trump beating Biden in November. “It’s because Trump seems to be getting stronger and stronger and Biden seems to be getting weaker and weaker,” he said, sounding like Cassandra.Indeed, Trump is approaching the primary with the swagger of an incumbent but heading into the general election with some of the insurgent energy he displayed in 2016. There will be some irony if the Iowa caucuses, a flawed and fragile yet beautiful exercise in democracy in church basements and school gyms, unleash a new authoritarianism on the world. More

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      Iowa caucuses 2024: who are the Republican presidential candidates?

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      The Republican race for the 2024 presidential nomination began with a surprisingly large field but has rapidly winnowed down. Now voters are flocking to the Iowa caucuses – the first contest in the process.In a US election, Republican and Democrats hold contests in each state to decide who their nominee will be in the presidential election in November. The winner in each state gets delegates who vote at the party conventions in the summer to choose their nominee. The state elections are usually called primaries with a simple vote, but in some states the election follows a more complex, meeting-based format known as a caucus.So far the 2024 Republican race has been heavily dominated by former US president Donald Trump, who has had a strong poll lead in Iowa itself, as well as in national surveys. Many experts expect a rerun of the 2020 race with Trump facing off against Democratic incumbent Joe Biden for the White House.The trailing pack of Republican candidates has seen numerous highly regarded figures – such as former vice-president Mike Pence and South Carolina senator Tim Scott – drop out. Those remaining have now split into two distinct groups of those who are (just about) potential rivals to Trump and those who are also-rans.Here are the key candidates dueling it out in Iowa:The favoriteDonald TrumpThe former US president’s campaign to retake the White House and once again grab his party’s nomination got off to a slow start that was widely mocked. But his campaign has steadily moved into a position of dominance and never looked likely to be dislodged from that.Trump declined to attend any of the Republican debates, has used his court appearances and many legal woes as a rallying cry to mobilize his base, and has run a surprisingly well-organized campaign. His extremist rhetoric, especially around his plans for a second term and the targeting of his political enemies, has sparked widespread fears over the threat to American democracy that his candidacy represents.His political style during the campaign has not shifted from his previous runs in 2016 and 2020 and, if anything, has become more extreme. Many see this as a result of his political and legal fates becoming entwined with a return to the Oval Office being seen as Trump’s best chance of nixing his legal problems.The potential rivalsNikki HaleyThe former South Carolina governor and ex-US ambassador to the United Nations under Trump has mostly hewed a fine line between being an alternative to Trump, while not outraging his base with too much direct criticism.That has paid off as Haley has shone in debates and worked hard on the campaign trail and risen in the polls to give her a shot at coming second in Iowa and causing an upset in New Hampshire – where she is polling strongly. However, that prominence has now earned Trump’s ire and the two campaigns are openly hurling insults at each other.Ron DeSantisThe rightwing Florida governor was widely seen as the most likely rival to Trump but DeSantis has proved a disaster as a campaigner on the national stage. Positioning himself as an extreme culture warrior, DeSantis has run a campaign of hardcore rightwing politics but he himself has proved a serious turnoff to voters.He has failed to use the debate stage to break through and been subject to a brutal months-long assault from Trump and his surrogates as his stiff campaign trail style damaged his standings. The result has been a prolonged tanking in the polls and Haley has largely overtaken him as the main “non-Trump” candidate.The also-ransVivek RamaswamyThe entrepreneur and extreme Trump fan had a moment in the sun during the early debates where he briefly seemed to be emerging as someone even Trumpier than Trump – but with a younger, more dynamic candidacy. That did not last long though as his poll numbers never caught on and his extremist comments generated endless negative press. He failed to qualify for the final debate.Asa HutchinsonFormer Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson has remained in the race – but few people would really know why. He has not qualified for recent debates and is not expected to make any meaningful impression in Iowa or nationally and frequently dips below 1% in polls. Hutchinson feels like an older school pre-Trump Republican campaigning in a vastly different age from the one where he carved out a career as a traditional conservative.@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:italic}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline 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Titlepiece”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GTGuardianTitlepiece-Bold.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GTGuardianTitlepiece-Bold.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GTGuardianTitlepiece-Bold.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:700;font-style:normal} More

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      Nikki Haley rides Iowa momentum, but likely for second place

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      One day before the Iowa caucuses, Nikki Haley addressed an energized crowd at a barbecue restaurant in Ames, just a few miles from Iowa State University. Despite the freezing temperatures, the room was filled to capacity with campaign volunteers, journalists and a few undecided caucus-goers.“This is truly cold,” Haley said. “But we’re going to keep on going anywhere and everywhere. We’re going to go all the way until the last hour because we know what situation we’re in.”Haley’s own situation has improved in recent days, as the former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the UN has gained momentum in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. After trailing Florida governor Ron DeSantis for months, the latest Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom poll showed Haley in second place in Iowa, winning the support of 20% of likely Republican caucus-goers compared to DeSantis’s 16%.But the poll also underscored the profound challenges that Haley – and any other Republican not named Donald Trump – faces in the quest for the nomination. Trump easily beat all of his opponents in the Iowa poll, capturing the support of 48% of likely caucus-goers. Even if Haley can squeak out a second-place finish in Iowa, the results are unlikely to answer the question that has shaped the entire Republican primary: how can any candidate defeat a former president who remains overwhelmingly popular with the party’s base?As she made her final pitch to Iowa voters on Sunday, Haley directly called out Trump, warning that his re-election would only bring more “chaos” at an already chaotic time for the nation.“I think President Trump was the right president at the right time. I agree with a lot of his policies. But rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him,” Haley said in Ames. “And we can’t be a country in disarray in a world on fire and go through four more years of chaos. We won’t survive it.”Arguing that she was the most electable Republican candidate, Haley pointed to a Wall Street Journal poll released last month, which showed her defeating Joe Biden by 17 points in a head-to-head match-up.“That’s bigger than the presidency. That’s the House. That’s the Senate. That’s governorships all the way down to school board,” Haley said. “You win by double digits, you’re going into DC with a mandate – a mandate to stop the wasteful spending and get our economy back on track.”Haley’s message appeared to be resonating with some voters as she crisscrossed Iowa this weekend. The blizzard that swept through Iowa forced Haley to hold remote events on Friday, but she was back on the campaign trail starting Saturday, holding town halls all across the state in the final days before the caucuses.“We just like her ideas. We like her style. Her positions seem to be well thought out,” Dennis Hinkle, a voter who attended Haley’s event in Iowa City on Saturday, said. “I’m not a lover of chaos. And I think we’re living with it every day.”Tina Mimnaugh, who attended the Ames event on Sunday and plans to caucus for Haley, said, “In the first debate, I just really appreciated the way she answered and the way she stood up for herself. She just had the same kind of values that I do.”The argument of Haley’s electability also appeared to hold sway with voters. “Statistically, I think she has a better chance. And we need someone with a better chance,” caucusgoer Nancy Wildanger said in Iowa City. “She’s very levelheaded. She’s smart. She’s got a vision. I feel good about her.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut Haley has had some stumbles in the weeks leading up to the caucuses. She was widely criticized for initially refusing to acknowledge that slavery was the cause of the civil war, comments that she later had to walk back. In a particularly stinging incident for Iowans, Haley said at a town hall in New Hampshire, which will hold its primary later this month, that the state would “correct” the results of the caucuses.“I trust every single one of you. You know how to do this,” Haley said in New Hampshire. “You know Iowa starts it. You know that you correct it.”Although her opponents criticized her for the gaffe, Haley’s comment accurately reflected her campaign’s approach to the early voting states. Trump remains well ahead of all of his opponents in Iowa, but Haley has inched closer to him in New Hampshire. According to the FiveThirtyEight average of New Hampshire polls, Haley is now roughly 11 points behind Trump, as she has cut his lead in half over the past month.Rather than being offended by Haley’s focus on New Hampshire, some of the Iowa caucus-goers who attended her town halls appeared rather clear-eyed about her strategy.“I think she’ll finish second [in Iowa],” Hinkle said. “If she comes in second, I think it’ll springboard her on to New Hampshire.”Sam Levine contributed reporting from Iowa City, Iowa More

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      ‘A sad circus’: Iowa caucuses arrive with little doubt over likely Republican victor

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      Few people relish the Iowa caucuses, the first act of the greatest political show on earth, more than Mike Draper. Since 2008 the Iowa native has hosted US presidential candidates at his novelty retail store and made tongue-in-cheek political merchandise. But this time, he feels, something is missing.“We’ve always had a fairly good finger on the pulse and it’s normally a circus but this year is just a sad circus,” said Draper, owner of Raygun in the state capital, Des Moines. “People are still going through the motions but there’s no real drama to it.”That is because Donald Trump, a twice-impeached former president still facing 91 criminal charges, is poised to complete his political resurrection on Monday with victory in the first nominating contest to decide which Republican takes on the Democratic incumbent Joe Biden in November’s election.Opinion polls show Trump casting a giant shadow over the sparsely populated, snow-swept state despite campaigning far less there than his rivals Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley. Most analyses say the question is not if he will win but by how much.It is a rare anti-climax for political aficionados in Iowa, which takes its outsized role in vetting the world’s most powerful person very seriously. Draper, 41, who votes Democratic, reflected: “We make a lot of shirts about sports and it’s tricky because it’s hard to make product that sells for a losing team but it’s also hard to make product that sells for a team that’s blowing everybody out.“This year, even on the Republican side, it’s almost like an incumbent is running uncontested and then you had DeSantis and Haley having a two-person debate in Des Moines while the guy who’s blowing them out of the water doesn’t even show up.”Such is the lack of engagement that, when Draper’s staff mounted a display to celebrate the caucuses, curious onlookers assumed it must be related to Presidents’ Day in February or Independence Day in July. The store responded with characteristic dry wit on a T-shirt: “Election 2024: You’d think battling a fascist takeover of America would spark more interest from people.”Another T-shirt, based on a snatch of conversation overheard on the New York subway, says: “What the hell is a caucus? And where the hell is Iowa?” These are questions that get asked every four years. A caucus is a gathering at a neighbourhood location, such as a school, church or union hall, where representatives make speeches on behalf of their favoured candidates. People then vote by secret ballot.Iowa is a midwestern state with the same population size as Wales (3.1 million). Hogs outnumber people by more than seven to one. It is whiter and more rural than most of the US. It has hosted the official start of every presidential campaign for the last half-century, offering a test of humility as candidates brave the icy plains to visit churches, diners, farms and school gyms, look voters in the eye and make their pitch.But the old maxim that “all politics is local” applies less in today’s nationalised, media-driven political landscape. Trump, 77, is the first loser of a presidential election to compete in Iowa four years later. He has the infrastructure and money to run the organised ground game that caucuses demand. His celebrity status has overwhelmed his hard-toiling opponents and enabled him to campaign at arm’s length.He held only 24 events in 19 counties in Iowa between 1 January 2023 and 4 January 2024, according to data collected by the Des Moines Register newspaper. This was far fewer than DeSantis (99 events in 57 counties), Haley (51 events in 30 counties) and Ramaswamy (239 events in 94 counties). Even Trump’s campaign surrogates have been drawing bigger crowds in the state than actual candidates.Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “For people like Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis, first-time candidates, Iowa’s important to be there in person but Trump is campaigning on the persona and mythology of Trump as much as anything else.“People don’t even feel like they need to meet him in person. He’s become a standard bearer for people who feel disenfranchised by whatever they view as the establishment and, even though they get a lot of benefits from the Biden administration programmes, Biden has been terrible at selling them.”A recent survey put Trump 34 percentage points clear of the field, suggesting that voters here care little for warnings that he is a nascent dictator ready to shred democracy. One major reason is born-again or evangelical Christians, who made up nearly two-thirds of caucus-goers during the 2016 Republican presidential primary, according to exit polling.This group seems willing to overlook his moral shortcomings if it means electing a perceived fighter who will deliver its objectives. Karen Johnson, a 67-year-old evangelical Christian, told the New York Times: “Trump is our David and our Goliath,” – neatly capturing his combination of sacred and profane.Art Cullen, editor of the Storm Lake Times newspaper, said: “North-west Iowa, where I live, is the most conservative part of the state and it’s just very solidly pro-Trump, including a lot of evangelicals who Ron DeSantis has been trying to court.“Trump is just dominant in Iowa. It’s going to be a good night for him.” But elections are also an expectations game and, if Trump dips below 50% of the vote in Iowa, it will be seen as a disappointment. In recent days his advisers have been reminding reporters that no Republican presidential candidate has won a contested Iowa caucus by more than 12 points since Bob Dole in 1988.There is another wild card: weather.During the weekend, extreme weather made Iowa’s roads dangerous and wreaked havoc with the final sprint of the caucus campaign. On Friday the state patrol posted a warning on social media that said: “Please, don’t put yourself or others in danger.”Trump’s campaign was forced to cancel three out of four in-person rallies over the weekend, opting to hold tele-rallies instead “out of an abundance of caution amid severe weather advisories”. Haley, who cancelled all three of her events on Friday, quipped to voters during a virtual town hall: “I definitely know I’m not in South Carolina anymore.”DeSantis did manage to hold an event on Friday morning in Ankeny, close to Des Moines, and said of the caucuses: “I know it’s gonna be cold. I know it’s gonna be not the most pleasant, but I don’t think you’ll ever be able to pass a vote that has more impact.”Iowans are famously hardy but Monday is forecast to be a record cold caucus night with temperatures predicted to dip as low as -14F (-26C). Biting winds could make it feel as cold as -45F in some places.This could reduce turnout but again might favour Trump because he has a fiercely loyal base. He confidently predicted last weekend: “We won’t lose one vote, because our people, they’re going to walk on glass.”Two subplots of this year’s caucuses are the implosion of DeSantis, 45, and the rise of 51-year-old Haley. A year ago the Florida governor was being hailed as a new Republican saviour who could offer Trumpism without Trump: rightwing populist policies without legal baggage or crass antics. Tens of millions of dollars, countless air miles and several staff departures later, he has little to show for it.Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said: “The biggest surprise in the past 12 months politically has been the steady weakening of the DeSantis candidacy. He was presented to the world as a person who had just about all Donald Trump’s virtues – as Republicans define them – with none of his vices and look at what’s happened to him.”A third-place finish for DeSantis on Monday could end his bid for the White House. Galston added: “Ron DeSantis has bet the farm on Iowa and, if he finishes an ignominious third, he will be a dead man walking and the only question is how long will he walk before he collapses. If he finishes a stronger than expected second, which you can’t rule out based on the amount of ground-level work he and his team have done there, that would be a surprise.”DeSantis has been criticised for lacking charm and charisma, more naturally predisposed to a scowl than a smile. One commentator memorably described him as the kind of guy who might unplug your life support to recharge his mobile phone.Schiller of Brown University said: “He’s not quite as good in person on the stump as people had hoped he would be and that was a problem. DeSantis tried to be Trump version two but the problem for him is that version one is running. At the end of the day, people like the original.“That happens in American politics: if you are unique – and Trump is, we can argue safely, unique – it’s hard to imitate it. You’ve seen all these candidates who try to imitate Trump fall flat on their face. Ron DeSantis is just an extended example of what happened to Senate candidates in 2022. As long as Trump is out there and is walking, talking and breathing, nobody wants the imitation.”Despite a recent gaffe over the cause of the civil war, when she failed to mention slavery, Haley has donor money and momentum on her side. A strong finish in Iowa would set her up well for New Hampshire, where some polls show her cutting Trump’s lead to single digits, and where the anti-Trump candidate Chris Christie’s recent decision to drop out could give her a further boost in support.John Zogby, an author and pollster, said: “She’s run the best campaign and she’s also the best candidate in terms of the tools and the rules. She is very good on her feet most of the time and she has a cheerful personality and is very subtly appealing to moderate and independent voters.”Normally, victory in Iowa is a step, not a leap, towards the White House. In 2008, Mike Huckabee won and John McCain trailed in fourth, but McCain became the nominee. In 2012, Rick Santorum edged out Mitt Romney but it was Romney who became the party’s standard bearer. And in 2016, Ted Cruz beat Trump into second place, only for Trump to secure the nomination and the presidency.But a big win for Trump on Monday will imply that his iron grip on the Republican party endures and a third consecutive nomination is his to lose. It will also signify a remarkable comeback for a man who suffered a crushing defeat by Biden in the 2020 presidential election, instigated a riot at the US Capitol in a desperate bid to overturn it and became the first former president hit by criminal indictments. And it will serve as a warning against complacency for Democrats and anyone around the world who fears a second Trump presidency.Joe Walsh, a former congressman who challenged the incumbent Trump in the 2020 Iowa caucuses and polled at 1%, said: “I expect him to win big. I expect Haley and DeSantis to be very distant. I expect maybe Haley to end up ahead of DeSantis and I wouldn’t be surprised if DeSantis gets out before New Hampshire and endorses Trump.”Walsh has not been surprised to see few Republican candidates directly attack Trump for most of the campaign. “Both Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, everybody in this primary, it’s been fucking mission impossible. This is Trump’s party and none of them have been trying to beat him. If you attack Trump, you’re done as a Republican. There’s no anti-Trump lane in that party. Period.” More

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

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

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      Who benefits as Christie ends presidential bid before Iowa caucus? – podcast

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      Hours before Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis took to the debate stage in Iowa on Wednesday night, more than 1,000 miles away in New Hampshire Chris Christie shocked his supporters by announcing he was dropping out of the race. The former New Jersey governor was the only candidate to consistently attack Donald Trump, in a field of Republicans trying to beat the former president, all the while keeping his base sweet.
      With only three days until the Iowa caucus, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Elaine Kamarck about who is most likely to come out on top

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

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      Nikki Haley emerges from TV debate as Trump’s nearest rival as Iowa vote looms

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      The former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley emerged from the last televised debate before the Iowa caucuses clearly Donald Trump’s strongest challenger for the Republican presidential nomination, boosted by the withdrawal of Chris Christie, the only explicitly anti-Trump candidate to register significantly with voters.Voting begins in Iowa on Monday, before New Hampshire stages its primary a week on Tuesday. Haley has closed on Trump in New Hampshire and has hopes of seizing second place in Iowa at the expense of the rightwing Florida governor, Ron DeSantis.Nonetheless, the Trump camp remains bullish as the Iowa vote looms after having maintained hefty leads in the polls for months. On Wednesday night, one senior aide said the campaign “couldn’t have scripted any better ourselves” events in the Des Moines debate, delighting in the spectacle of the former US president’s rivals slogging it out on the CNN stage while Trump – who continues to refuse to debate – took an easy ride at a Fox News town hall.“If you watched any part of the ‘JV’ debate this evening, you see two campaigns that are beating the living hell out of each other,” Chris LaCivita told reporters after Haley fiercely debated DeSantis, while Trump performed on his own elsewhere.“Then you have a Donald Trump commercial that shows up and he’s talking about Joe Biden … we couldn’t have scripted any better ourselves.”“JV” stands for “junior varsity” – a designation for college athletes below first-team standard. At Drake University, Haley said, “I wish Donald Trump was up on this stage” but spent most of her evening fighting DeSantis, regardless of Trump’s whopping Iowa lead.Fox gave Trump an easy ride. On a network which has paid $787.5m to settle one lawsuit arising from his stolen election lie and faces other such threats, the subject never came up. Nor did Trump’s legal problems arising from that lie, including 17 criminal charges regarding election subversion. Nor were Trump’s other 74 criminal charges, for retention of classified information and hush-money payments, high on Fox’s agenda.Tim Miller, a Republican operative turned anti-Trump activist and writer for the Bulwark, a conservative Never-Trump website, delivered a withering assessment of the Fox News town hall.Describing “one big primetime infomercial for the frontrunner”, Miller described Trump’s hosts, the “‘straight news’ reporters Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum”, sitting “beside the disgraced former president listening to his Catskills stand-up bit and giggling like a couple of undergrads after a 5mg weed gummy”.Trump did not avoid every pitfall. Seeking to thread a particularly tricky needle, he questioned the harshness of abortion bans supported by Haley and DeSantis. But he also crowed that “for 54 years, [conservatives] were trying to get Roe v Wade terminated, and I did it, and I’m proud to have done it”.The remark drew applause from the Fox audience but delight from Democrats, given how the supreme court’s removal of the federal right to abortion last year (actually 49 years after Roe, the ruling which guaranteed the right) and other attacks on healthcare rights have fueled Democratic wins at the polls. Up and down the ballot, abortion is set to be a key election issue this year.Tommy Vietor, a former staffer to Barack Obama, posted Trump’s remark to social media and said: “Biden campaign is going to feature this in about a billion dollars’ worth of ads.”DeSantis, meanwhile, has spent hundreds of millions on his campaign but is widely seen to be in deep trouble, needing a strong second in Iowa to avoid having to drop out. He also stood to lose more than Haley from Christie’s decision earlier on Wednesday to bring an end to his own campaign.The former New Jersey governor was the only candidate to run on an explicitly anti-Trump platform, regardless of Trump’s hold on Republican voters.Ending his campaign in New Hampshire, the libertarian-minded state on which he pinned his hopes, Christie said: “Anyone who is unwilling to say that [Trump] is unfit to be president of the United States is unfit themselves to be president of the United States.”Haley and DeSantis have begun to attack Trump as caucus day looms but not in strong terms and while still reserving their harshest fire for each other. Christie also had harsh if unscripted words for both his rivals, in comments apparently picked up by accident on a hot mic before his speech was streamed.“She’s gonna get smoked and you and I both know it,” Christie said, presumably referring to Haley. “She’s not up to this.”He also said: “DeSantis called me, petrified that I would –” before the audio cut out.The remarks, which CNN confirmed were directed at Wayne MacDonald, Christie’s New Hampshire campaign chair, pointed to harsh political realities.Haley is clear in second in New Hampshire and has been reducing Trump’s lead. Most polling indicates Christie supporters will now turn her way. But Haley remains well behind Trump, particularly in her own state, South Carolina, which will be third to vote. Campaign wisdom says candidates who cannot win their home state cannot hope to win over their whole party.DeSantis is well behind Trump in Florida and everywhere else. He would certainly have reason to be “petrified” that Christie’s withdrawal will ensure Haley becomes the only competitor to Trump with any notion of viability at all.The DeSantis and Haley campaigns did not immediately comment. More