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      US Senate passes stopgap bill to avert government shutdown

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      The Senate voted on Thursday to extend current federal spending and keep the government open, sending a short-term measure to the House that would avoid a shutdown and push off a final budget package until early March.The House is scheduled to vote on the measure and send it to Joe Biden later in the day.The stopgap bill, passed by the Senate on a 77-18 vote, comes after a bipartisan spending deal between the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and the Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, this month and a subsequent agreement to extend current spending so the two chambers have enough time to pass individual spending bills.The temporary measure will run to 1 March for some federal agencies whose approved funds were set to run out on Friday and extend the remainder of government operations to 8 March.Johnson has been under pressure from his right flank to scrap the budget agreement with Schumer, and the bill to keep the government running will need Democratic support to pass the Republican-majority House. Johnson has insisted he will stick with the deal as moderates in the party have urged him not to back out.It would be the third time Congress has extended current spending as House Republicans have bitterly disagreed over budget levels and some on the right have demanded steeper cuts. The former House speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted by his caucus in October after striking an agreement with Democrats to extend current spending the first time. Johnson has also come under criticism as he has wrestled with how to appease his members and avoid a government shutdown in an election year.“We just needed a little more time on the calendar to do it and now that’s where we are,” Johnson said on Tuesday about the decision to extend federal funding yet again. “We’re not going to get everything we want.”Most House Republicans have so far refrained from saying that Johnson’s job is in danger. But a revolt of even a handful of Republicans could endanger his position in the narrowly divided House.The Virginia representative Bob Good, one of eight Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy, has been pushing Johnson to reconsider the deal with Schumer.“If your opponent in negotiation knows that you fear the consequence of not reaching an agreement more than they fear the consequence of not reaching an agreement, you will lose every time,” Good said this week.Other Republicans acknowledge Johnson is in a tough spot. “The speaker was dealt with the hand he was dealt,” said the Kentucky congressman Andy Barr. “We can only lose one vote on the majority side. I think it’s going to have to be bipartisan.”The short-term measure comes amid negotiations on a separate spending package that would provide wartime dollars to Ukraine and Israel and strengthen security at the US-Mexico border. Johnson is also under pressure from the right not to accept a deal that is any weaker than a House-passed border measure that has no Democratic support.Johnson, Schumer and other congressional leaders and committee heads visited the White House on Wednesday to discuss that spending legislation. Johnson used the meeting to push for stronger border security measures while Biden and Democrats detailed Ukraine’s security needs as it continues to fight Russia.Biden has requested a $110bn package for the wartime spending and border security. More

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      US third-party centrists file formal complaint over election ‘conspiracy’

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      The centrist group No Labels has filed a formal complaint with the justice department, asking it to investigate an “alleged unlawful conspiracy” to shut down its effort to secure ballot access for the 2024 presidential election.No Labels has not yet decided whether it will run a third party against Joe Biden and the Republican nominee, widely expected to be Donald Trump, in November’s presidential election. Critics say the effort would have the unintended consequence of hurting Biden and helping Trump.Last week No Labels sent an eight-page letter to the justice department’s Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for the civil rights division, and Nicole Argentieri, acting assistant attorney general for the criminal division, accusing its opponents of violating federal law including racketeering and a number of criminal civil rights provisions.“There is a group of activists and operatives and party officials who are participating in alleged illegal conspiracy to use intimidation, harassment and fear against representatives of No Labels, its donors and its potential candidates,” Dan Webb, a No Labels leader who has served as the US attorney in Chicago, told a press conference in Washington DC on Thursday.The letter cites examples including a recent Semafor report on an 80-minute call organised by Matt Bennett, co-founder of the thinktank Third Way. One attendee explained on the call how they would dissuade candidates from running on a No Labels unity ticket: “Through every channel we have, to their donors, their friends, the press, everyone – everyone – should send the message: if you have one fingernail clipping of a skeleton in your closet, we will find it.”In another case, Holly Page, a co-founder of No Labels, was allegedly approached by a representative of the Lincoln Project and told to walk away from the group. She was allegedly warned: “You have no idea of the forces aligned against you. You will never be able to work in Democratic politics again.”The letter also notes that Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, posted a tweet last year of a video in which he said No Labels and its leaders “need to be burned to the fucking ground politically”.At Thursday’s press conference, Pat McCrory, a national co-chair and former governor of North Carolina, responded: “Who do they think they are, Tony Soprano? I hope not.”Benjamin Chavis Jr, a No Labels national co-chair and a leader and veteran civil rights activist, said: “The alleged conspiracy to stop No Labels is a brazen voter suppression effort.“Based on the evidence that we have submitted to the United States Department of Justice, if individuals were working to frighten and harass an organisation seeking to register disenfranchised voters, the country would be outraged and those individuals would likely be prosecuted. That is what is happening today and needs to be exposed for what it is.”Joe Lieberman, a No Labels National founding chair and former senator, added: “It’s a matter of giving voice to millions of Americans who feel abandoned by the Democratic and Republican political establishments. They’re angry at the two major parties. Who can blame them?“And they’re profoundly disappointed that they’re going to be forced to choose once again between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. They want a third choice. There’s a lot of talk lately about democracy being on the ballot in 2024 and in many ways it is. But I think it’s really important to understand what we mean by the word democracy.”Demand for a third-party presidential candidate has reached record highs amid deep voter dissatisfaction with 81-year-old Biden and Trump, who faces 91 criminal charges across four cases. A Reuters/Ipsos poll in December showed six in 10 respondents were unhappy with the two-party system and wanted a third choice.Founded in 2009, No Labels is now on the ballot in 14 states and say it will decide in March whether to offer its ballot line to a unity presidential ticket. If it does, the Unity ticket presidential campaign will be responsible for securing ballot access in the final 18 states plus the District of Columbia.On Tuesday a federal judge blocked the Arizona secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, from recognizing candidates wanting to run for office under the No Labels banner aside from the party’s yet-to-be-chosen ticket for president and vice-president. Lieberman acknowledged that, should Nikki Haley drop out of the Republican primary race and express an interest in joining a No Labels ticket, she would “deserve serious consideration”.The Lincoln Project rejected No Labels’ legal complaint, saying in statement: “No Labels is a dark money group that is so consumed with its own quest for power and relevancy that it is willing to risk electing Trump, despite their own acknowledgment that he is a dangerous ideologue.“And like Trump, they want to weaponize the DoJ to get to attack their opponents for protected political speech. This is a desperate attempt to salvage their failing campaign and keep their fleeing supporters who have finally seen through their facade.” More

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

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

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      Major poll gives Trump 16-point lead in New Hampshire days before primary

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      Donald Trump continues to dominate the race for the Republican presidential nomination, enjoying a 16-point lead in New Hampshire days before it becomes the second state to vote, according to a major new poll.Suffolk University, the Boston Globe and NBC found the former president at 50% support in New Hampshire, to 34% for the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. Ron DeSantis, the hard-right governor of Florida, who edged out Haley for second in Iowa this week, was a distant third at 5%.In New Hampshire, undeclared voters can take part in state or presidential primaries. Many observers think such voters will have an outsized effect on the Republican primary this year, given the lack of real Democratic contest because Joe Biden is president.In the new poll, Trump dominated among registered Republicans and voters who called themselves conservatives. Haley led among moderates and independents.David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston, told the Globe: “Haley’s had a tough week: underperforming in Iowa, trying to answer Trump’s attacks on her positions on social security and immigration, and the recent [Vivek] Ramaswamy endorsement of Trump helping him with younger GOP voters.”Ramaswamy, a brash biotech entrepreneur with whom Haley frequently clashed in debates, dropped out after finishing fourth in Iowa.For Haley, Paleologos said, there was still time “to at least close the gap with undecided voters or even with some Trump voters, and pull Trump below 50”.Other recent polls have shown Haley closing the gap in New Hampshire. On Wednesday, the American Research Group had Haley and Trump tied at 40% each.Not all polls are created equal. The polling analysis site FiveThirtyEight.com gives the American Research Group a C+ rating. Suffolk University gets an A-.After New Hampshire, the next state to vote will be Haley’s own. The FiveThirtyEight average for South Carolina puts Trump at 55%, Haley at 25% and DeSantis at 12%. Nationally, the site puts Trump at 63%, and Haley and DeSantis both 41 points behind.With Trump displaying such dominance despite facing unprecedented legal jeopardy – 91 criminal charges, various civil suits and attempts to keep him off the ballot for inciting an insurrection – most observers think Haley must win in New Hampshire if the primary is to present anything like a meaningful contest.Seeking to present a straight choice between her and Trump, Haley said she would not take part in New Hampshire debates planned for Thursday (to be hosted by ABC) and Sunday (CNN). As Trump has skipped all debates so far, that left DeSantis the only contender willing to appear.Both debates were scrapped. CNN said: “We will continue to pursue other opportunities as the campaign season progresses through 2024, including candidate town halls this week with Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley.”Haley told CNN that Trump was “who I’m running against, that’s who I want. At the end of the day, he’s the frontrunner … There is nobody else I need to debate.”But on Wednesday Trump was more than 250 miles south of New Hampshire, in court in New York City in a defamation suit brought by the writer E Jean Carroll, whose claim that Trump raped her has already been deemed “substantially true” by the judge.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionClaiming Haley was “terrified of getting smoked” on the debate stage, the DeSantis campaign posted Iowa remarks in which Haley said of Trump: “You can’t have an election and not appear on a debate stage in front of the people who are gonna be voting for you. That’s an arrogant approach to think you don’t have to do that.”Haley and DeSantis were campaigning in New Hampshire on Tuesday but DeSantis was reportedly preparing to switch focus to South Carolina. Once a fundraising juggernaut, the DeSantis campaign has seen donations fall in line with polling results.“It’s a pretty sober conversation in terms of how much more the campaign can raise in this environment,” an unnamed source told the Washington Post. Elsewhere, the DeSantis-supporting Super Pac Never Back Down began laying off staff.DeSantis sought to sound a warning to voters, telling CNN that should Trump be the Republican nominee, the presidential election “will revolve around all these legal issues, his trials, perhaps convictions … and about things like January 6” – the deadly attack on Congress Trump incited as he attempted to overturn his 2020 defeat.Republicans, DeSantis said, would “lose if voters are making a decision based on that. We don’t want it to be a referendum on those issues.”Many agree. Digesting the result in Iowa, JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois and a Biden surrogate, told MSNBC: “Almost half of the base of the Republican party showing up for this caucus voted against Donald Trump.“Think about that. I think that is telling. It tells you the weakness of Donald Trump and also the opportunity for Democrats because in the end … if the base doesn’t turn out for Donald Trump in the general election enthusiastically and Democrats turn out [their] base, this is all about independents – and independents don’t like Donald Trump.” More

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      Ron DeSantis insists US is ‘not a racist country’, echoing claim by Nikki Haley

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      The hard-right Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, said the US was “not a racist country”, echoing a controversial claim by Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who is also trying to deny Donald Trump the Republican presidential nomination.“Well, the US is not a racist country,” DeSantis told a CNN town hall in New Hampshire. “And we’ve overcome things in our history. You know, I think the founding fathers – they established a set of principles that are universal.”More than 250 years before independence from Britain, enslaved African people were brought to American soil by Spanish ships in the 1500s. Native Americans were displaced and enslaved.The first ship of enslaved Africans arrived on Virginia soil in 1619. Slavery in southern states caused the civil war (a fact Haley failed to mention when quizzed on the subject last month), a conflict fought between 1861 and 1865 and ending with slavery abolished. Jim Crow laws enforced segregation and unequal treatment in southern states until the civil rights reforms of the 1960s.Entrenched social and economic inequalities persist, affecting all racial minorities. The last presidential election, in 2020, took place after a summer of protests for racial justice inspired by the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis.Going into the New Hampshire primary next week, DeSantis and Haley trail Trump by wide margins. This week, DeSantis edged out Haley for a distant second in Iowa.On Tuesday, Haley, whose parents came to the US from India, told Fox News: “I’m a brown girl … who became the first female minority governor in history, who became a UN ambassador and who is now running for president.“If that’s not the American dream, I don’t know what is. You can sit there and give me all the reasons why you think I can’t do this. I will continue to defy everybody on why we can do this. And we will get it done.“We’re not a racist country … we’ve never been a racist country. Our goal is to make sure that today is better than yesterday. Are we perfect? No. But our goal is to always make sure we try and be more perfect every day that we can.”Amid criticism, a Haley spokesperson said: “America has always had racism, but America has never been a racist country.”Race and racism are polarising issues across US society. Republicans have recently pursued attacks on teaching about race and racism in US history as a way of attracting support. DeSantis has faced his own controversies, including over a Florida attempt to change how the history of slavery is taught.In New Hampshire, asked about Haley’s remarks, DeSantis said the principles of the Declaration of Independence – signed in 1776, saying “all men are created equal” – “may not have been universally applied at the time. But I think they understood what they were doing. They understood that those principles would be the engine for progress for generations to come.”Pressed on Haley’s contention that the US is not a racist country, DeSantis said: “Well, what I said was we’ve had challenges with how race was viewed.“And so, for example, those were universal principles in the Declaration of Independence. And you had a [supreme court] decision in the 1850s [that] said Dred Scott [an enslaved man who sued for his freedom], because he was Black, wasn’t an American citizen. That was wrong. That was discriminating on the basis of race. That’s why you ended up having the 14th amendment ratified to overturn Dred Scott.”Approved after the civil war, the 14th amendment gave citizenship to formerly enslaved people. It also barred former Confederates running for office – a provision Colorado and Maine are now seeking to apply to Trump, for inciting the January 6 attack on Congress.According to the Pew Research Center, Republican voters are overwhelmingly white.“Yes,” DeSantis continued. “We’ve had challenges with how we’ve dealt with race as a society.”On Wednesday, Kamala Harris, the first woman and first woman of colour to be vice-president, discussed Haley and DeSantis’s remarks with ABC.“The issue of race in America is not something that should be the subject of a soundbite,” Harris said. “The history of racism in America should never be the subject of … a question that is meant to elicit a one-sentence answer.“But there is no denying that we have, in our history as a nation, racism, and that racism has played a role in the history of our nation.” More

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      Republicans’ bid to hold Hunter Biden in contempt appears to be suspended

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      Efforts by House Republicans to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress appear to be in suspension following new discussions with his attorneys that could lead to the president’s son testifying in the near future.The development follows Biden’s surprise appearance at a congressional oversight committee meeting last week during which the Republicans complained he was refusing to make himself available in defiance of their subpoena for closed-door testimony.The panel, in parallel with the judiciary committee, voted to progress contempt resolutions to the full House anyway.Now both resolutions are on hold as both sides seek cooperation over a new date for him to testify in the Republican-led impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden. It follows lawyers for Biden writing to the chairs of both committees, Republicans James Comer of Kentucky and Jim Jordan of Ohio, stating their subpoenas were “legally invalid” because they predated December’s House vote authorizing the impeachment push, NBC News reported.Both chairs said they would issue new subpoenas, the network said, and were willing to recommend delaying the contempt vote if Biden “genuinely cooperated … and worked to set a date for a closed-door deposition”.Biden had previously insisted he would be willing to testify to the committees only in open session, but his attorneys have since said they would accept new subpoenas to give evidence in private.“If you issue a new proper subpoena, now that there is a duly authorized impeachment inquiry, Mr Biden will comply for a hearing or deposition,” his lead lawyer, Abbe Lowell, wrote to Comer and Jordan.“We will accept such a subpoena on Mr Biden’s behalf.”Lowell did not immediately respond to a request for further comment, NBC said, but an oversight committee spokesperson’s comments to the network on Tuesday suggest negotiations have advanced.“Following an exchange of letters between the parties on January 12 and January 14, staff for the committees and lawyers for Hunter Biden are working to schedule Hunter Biden’s appearance,” the spokesperson said.“Negotiations are ongoing this afternoon, and in conjunction with the disruption to member travel and canceling votes, the House rules committee isn’t considering the contempt resolution today to give the attorneys additional time to reach an agreement.”Republicans want Biden’s testimony as they look into unproven allegations of corruption involving his father, with Democrats accusing them of seeking it in private because they know there is no evidence that would implicate the president.“We are here today because the chairman has bizarrely decided to obstruct his own investigation and is now seeking to hold Hunter Biden in contempt after he accepted the chairman’s multiple public offers to come answer the committee’s questions under oath before the American people,” the Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin told last week’s oversight hearing.The meeting quickly descended into farce when Biden appeared in the company of his lawyers, and Democratic members pleaded with Comer to let him testify, to no avail.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLowell held a gaggle with reporters outside the committee room after Biden walked out just as the firebrand Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene was rising to speak.“Republican chairs … are commandeering an unprecedented resolution to hold somebody in contempt who has offered to publicly answer all their proper questions. The question there is, what are they afraid of?” he said.Democrats see the contempt moves against Biden, and the “baseless” impeachment inquiry against his father, as part of a wider effort to smear the president as he seeks re-election later this year.In a separate development reported by NBC, Hunter Biden’s Hollywood attorney, Kevin Morris, is scheduled to speak with members of the House oversight, judiciary and ways and means committees for “transcribed interviews” on Thursday.Biden pleaded not guilty to federal tax charges in Los Angeles last week, prosecutors alleging he engaged “in a four-year scheme to not pay at least $1.4m in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019”.Morris has emerged as a key figure and “fixer” in Biden’s California troubles and appeared at his side in Congress last week.According to NBC, Morris began advising Biden in 2020 and arranged to pay about $2m outstanding tax obligations to the IRS during the following two years. More

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      Donald Trump beat his opponents. But can he beat the courts? | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Donald Trump’s most dangerous race is not with other Republican candidates, but against the law. In his political match, he faces no serious contest. His victory in the Iowa caucuses results was crushing. But in his legal trials, he is on the run. For Trump, the legal is the political.The calendars overlap. His overarching strategy is not so much calculated to defeat his feeble Republican opponents but to delay his trials by any gambit necessary. The delays give him space to depict himself as a martyr, taking the slings and arrows for his believers, who are his hope to rescue him.So long as the band plays, he doesn’t have to face the music. Once it stops, his primary voters are replaced by a jury. He can rant all he likes on his Truth Social account, but the evidence will finally speak for itself. Trump strains to exploit the political campaign as his shield to avoid the day of judgment. Plus, it’s a cash cow.January 6 is more than the most important issue in the election for Trump and his followers. It is his passion play. His rivals have helpfully acted as his Greek chorus. Rather than develop an alternative strategy, say, to lever college-educated Republicans away from Trump, they have shouted from the wings to amplify his conspiracy theories. “Why so zealous in pursuing Trump yet so passive about Hillary or Hunter?” Ron DeSantis tweeted last June. Nikki Haley, for her part, chimed in to denounce the justice system as “prosecutorial overreach, double standards and vendetta politics”. Trump could not have paid for better ringers.Only Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, erstwhile but remorseful booster, was willing to utter the forbidden, “Too bad, go to jail.” The rest waved their hands at an August debate like eager pupils seeking teacher’s attention that they would pardon Trump. Five days before the Iowa caucuses, polling poorly, Christie dropped out, declaring: “I’m going to make sure that in no way do I enable Donald Trump to ever be president of the United States again.” He refused to endorse anyone. “No one’s going to tell the truth about him.” On a hot mic, he was caught saying about Haley: “She’s going to get smoked,” and “She’s not up to this.” Stating the obvious was more a shrug than a prophesy. Yet she could not even scratch into second place.The result of the Iowa caucuses was an easy tale foretold. But it has been significant in revealing the degree to which Trump has consolidated his domination over the shell of the Republican party. At the end of the process that will inexorably nominate him the remnant of the GOP will be subsumed into his cult.His success in debauching opinion among Republicans is clear in the answer of Iowa Republicans to an exit poll question: “Do you think that Joe Biden legitimately won the presidency in 2020?” Of the respondents, 65% answered negatively, and of them 69% voted for Trump. For them, the January 6 insurrection is the centerpiece of this election. With Trump, they believe that the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers imprisoned for their violent assault on the Capitol are “hostages” who deserve pardons, and that Trump must be vindicated. In their eyes, he is not being prosecuted, but persecuted, just as Trump’s primary opponents have echoed.Iowa was more than a political event. It was a religious experience for most of the caucus goers, slightly more than half of them evangelical Christian nationalists. Voting for Trump was not a civic exercise but a spiritual crusade to make America into a Christian nation on a divine mission as the founding fathers supposedly intended according to their crackpot history. The first Trump term was just the beginning; the next will be like a second coming. Iowa is the first step towards Trump’s anointment, his deification for a holy war.In Trump’s first campaign in 2016, he was an outlander, a brash New Yorker from the church of the art of the deal. Iowa Republicans have consistently given their votes to the candidate who was the most fervent evangelical Christian linked to the religious right. In 2000, born-again George W Bush won in a walk; in 2008, it was preacher and Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee who defeated John McCain; in 2012, rightwing Catholic Rick Santorum trounced Mitt Romney; and in 2016 Ted Cruz of Texas clobbered Trump, who then only won only 21% of the evangelical support.Within the new dispensation, Trump has been elevated into a double existence. He is both an American incarnation of King Cyrus of ancient Persia, who conquered Babylon, and the godhead himself. Before January 6, Christian nationalists saw him as a flawed vessel sent by God to restore the old kingdom. Many of the January 6 insurrectionists flaunted Christian nationalist signs, flags and slogans. Now, they view Trump as Christ-like, being crucified on their behalf. As Cyrus, Trump is forgiven his sins. As Christ, his crimes are signs of his divinity.During the 2016 Iowa caucuses, the most prominent evangelical leader of the Christian right in the state, Bob Vander Plaats, endorsed Ted Cruz. This time he backed DeSantis. Trump was so confident of evangelical backing that two days before the caucuses, he laid into him, tweeting: “Bob Vander Plaats, the former High School Accountant from Iowa, will do anything to win, something which he hasn’t done in many years. He’s more known for scamming Candidates than he is for Victory, but now he’s going around using Disinformation from the Champions of that Art, the Democrats.”Trump in Iowa conflated his pressing legal troubles with the imaginary oppression of Christians. “Under crooked Joe Biden, Christians and Americans of faith are being persecuted and government has been weaponized against religion like never before. And also presidents like never before,” Trump said on 19 December. Referring to the mafia kingpin who was finally nailed on income tax evasion, he added: “I always say Al Capone was treated better than I was treated.” Vander Plaats’ grip was broken.Of all the odd occurrences in the campaign so far, one of the strangest was a stray cogent remark from Ron DeSantis, who has been relentlessly clueless to the point that after his last debate with Nikki Haley he approached the audience from the stage to shake his wife’s hand. In trying to explain why he was failing, without mentioning that he spent more on private jets than on advertising, he blathered into coherence. “It’s all a racket – they’re trying to get clicks, they’re trying to do all this stuff,” he said. “Big causes start out as a movement, end up a business and degenerate into a racket. That’s just human nature.”Not exactly. DeSantis was paraphrasing a social philosopher on the psychological basis of authoritarian movements. Eric Hoffer was an itinerant longshoreman whose book The True Believer, on the mentality of Naziism and Communism, published in 1951, drew praise from President Dwight Eisenhower in one of his first press conferences. Hoffer described how individuals erased their volition and critical thinking by submerging themselves into movements led by demagogues.“The fanatic,” Hoffer wrote, “is perpetually incomplete and insecure. He cannot generate self-assurance out of his individual resources – out of his rejected self – but finds it only by clinging passionately to whatever support he happens to embrace.” The demagogue appeals to restoring the good old days. “A glorification of the past can serve as a means to belittle the present.” Through propaganda, “people can be made to believe only in what they already ‘know’”. Enemies must be identified as the source of decay. “Finally, it seems, the ideal devil is a foreigner. To qualify as a devil, a domestic enemy must be given a foreign ancestry.” But, Hoffer wrote, it would be a mistake to give too much credence to the ideas of demagogues. “The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.”Eisenhower, who had led the armies that defeated Hitler, wrote a letter in 1958 warning against authoritarianism. Citing Hoffer, he stated that “dictatorial systems make one contribution to their people which leads them to tend to support such systems – freedom from the necessity of informing themselves and making up their own minds concerning these tremendous complex and difficult questions”.DeSantis, who has attempted and failed to supplant Trump by whipping up hysteria against the menace of “wokeness”, more or less got one of Hoffer’s memorable quotes right. “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”In Georgia, on 14 August 2023, Trump was indicted on 41 felony counts with 18 co-defendants for conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results under the state’s Rico statute – the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.The problem in applying Hoffer’s aphorism to Trump is that with him it was always a racket.
      Sidney Blumenthal is a Guardian US columnist. He is a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth More

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      Trump doubled his voting base in Iowa. Here’s who voted for him

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