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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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      ‘An instrument of chaos’: Trump leads polls as Iowa Republicans weigh future of US democracy

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      As Iowa Republicans gather on Monday to choose their presidential candidate, a host of big questions surround the potential return of Donald Trump and the future of democracy in the US.Ongoing court cases against Trump, the frontrunner, loom large. Threats against elections officials and judges in Trump-related cases raise the possibility of political violence in a tense election year. For some Republican voters, the belief that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump remains a core part of their ideology.Trump also faces the prospect of being removed from the ballot over his role in the 6 January insurrection. Legal decisions using the 14th amendment as a basis for removing the former president from the contest will be heard by the US supreme court in February.The former president has vowed to retaliate against his enemies, go after Joe Biden and his family, and weaponize the justice department for his political goals in a second term in office predicted to center around retribution.Trump’s legal liabilities and heated rhetoric are not turning off his base of voters – they remain steadfast supporters of the Maga movement and think the cases against him are part of a conspiracy to keep him out of office. For voters choosing other candidates, though, the former president’s court woes and penchant for whipping up chaos have turned them off.A poll of likely Republican caucus voters in Iowa found that 61% said their support of Trump would not be affected by a potential criminal conviction before the general election. The NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll says 19% of Republican caucus-goers in Iowa go even further – they would be more likely to back Trump if he is convicted – though 18% said the opposite.Jamie Copher, a 52-year-old Trump supporter who works in sales and marketing, voted for the first time in 2020 for Trump because he “ran this country like a business”, she said at a rally in Indianola, Iowa. She thinks Biden did not receive 81m legal votes in the 2020 election and that the election was a fraud, but she does not think the 2024 election could be stolen because “too many Americans are going to be watching”. (There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.)“I heard before that they were going to steal the 2020 election and, to be honest with you, I didn’t think any Democrat was smart enough to be able to steal an election and didn’t realise they’ve been stealing elections since pretty much before I was alive. I’ve learned a lot about the election system and I love it so I’m getting more involved locally,” she said.The potential of Trump being removed from the ballot because of the 14th amendment will not prevent Copher from voting for him.“I’m writing that man’s name in and I don’t care if he has a VP or not because I believe he never conceded. He’s still my president.”Cathy Kurtinitis, a 69-year-old Trump supporter, described January 6 as “overblown” and said the 2020 election should have been investigated more than it was, pointing out that Biden did not campaign in person much or draw the crowds Trump did.Asked if she is confident that Trump would beat Biden in 2024, Kurtinitis replied: “Apart from the machinations of the deep state, yes.”Trump’s supporters have not been put off by his language in recent months on the campaign trail, where he has vowed to be a dictator for a day after resuming office and called his political opponents “vermin”.Gary Leffler, 62, does not buy in to the notion that Trump would be a dictator. “Well, if he was going to do that he would have done it the first time, so what we say in Iowa is that’s a bunch of hogwash.”For the Republicans who are trying to avoid a Trump return, the concerns around the frontrunner are more of a turn-off. They do not like how his words tend to require clarification after the fact, though they are not always sure if he intends to incite violence or means exactly what he says. And they are looking for a future president who does not bring such baggage, which they see as a distraction, even if they also believe the 2020 election was not fair and the lawsuits are politically motivated.The former UN ambassador Nikki Haley’s supporters were more likely to say a conviction would hinder their support of Trump in a general election in the NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll.Haley, seen as likely to place second in Iowa, has more crossover appeal to moderate and independent voters. Some of her supporters in Iowa said they did not believe the 2020 election was stolen and thought those involved in the insurrection were rightly held accountable, but that the court cases against Trump could backfire and only solidify his support.Jim Baker, a 61-year-old from San Diego who came to Iowa to help Haley’s campaign in the final days of the caucus, said he thought Trump lost to Biden, but that Biden had done a “poor job” as president.The 2024 election should be about finding the right person to lead the country forward, Baker said. “Donald Trump is not that person.”Still, he was not sure if the threat of political violence could come true or if it was more of Trump’s rhetoric. “There’s a lot of bark,” he said. “I don’t know how much bite there is. There’s a lot of bark. Yeah, he loves to bark and he loves to thrive on barking.”Supporters of the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, supporters were less likely to turn against Trump if he is convicted compared to Haley supporters, according to the NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll.Some supporters of DeSantis, who typically polls in third place in the Republican contest, said the prospect of electing Trump again, particularly while he faces ongoing civil and criminal cases, was too risky. Some said they were tired of the Trumpian brand of politics.Kent Christen, a 53-year-old analyst from Cedar Rapids, said the former president is careless when he talks, though he did not think Trump was necessarily telling people to be violent.“I think the issue is there’s not much delta between his brain and his mouth,” Christen said. “And it’s more and more difficult these days for people to clean up his message behind him. He gives people too many opportunities. Chaos follows him. He’s like an instrument of chaos. I’m kind of tired of all that. That’s the biggest reason I’m tired of him.”Amy Christen, a Cedar Rapids special education teacher who attended a DeSantis rally this weekend, said she did not think a Trump loss would lead to political violence, but she thought the left could become violent instead.“I will definitely see violence if Biden loses. I don’t know why the left – we saw the summer of love – we saw it in Seattle, in Portland, in Kenosha, we’ve seen it in Minneapolis,” she said, referring to the 2020 protests after George Floyd’s murder. “They’re angry. They’re violent.” 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 Full”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Regular.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Regular.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Regular.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:400;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-RegularItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-RegularItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-RegularItalic.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:400;font-style:italic}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Medium.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Medium.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Medium.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:500;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-MediumItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-MediumItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-MediumItalic.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:500;font-style:italic}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Semibold.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Semibold.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Semibold.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:600;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-SemiboldItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-SemiboldItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-SemiboldItalic.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:600;font-style:italic}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Bold.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Bold.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Bold.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:700;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-BoldItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-BoldItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-BoldItalic.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:700;font-style:italic}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Black.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Black.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Black.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:900;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-BlackItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-BlackItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-BlackItalic.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:900;font-style:italic}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian 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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      ‘This person should not be president’: Kamala Harris takes hits in book on Biden

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      Considering Kamala Harris’s fitness to take over from Joe Biden should the need arise, a top aide to the former California senator’s 2020 campaign said: “This person should not be president of the United States.”The withering assessment, given after Harris was picked for vice-president in 2020, is reported in The Truce: Progressives, Centrists and the Future of the Democratic Party, by the reporters Hunter Walker and Luppe B Luppen. The book will be published in the US on 24 January 2024. The Guardian obtained a copy.Harris ran for president in 2020, but withdrew a month before the first vote. Her campaign, Walker and Luppen quote the unnamed aide as saying, was “rotten from the start.“A lot of us, at least folks that I was friends with on the campaign, all realised that: ‘Yeah, this person should not be president of the United States.”Another unnamed aide, identified as a “senior staffer”, is quoted as saying Harris’s backstory, as the child of Indian and Jamaican immigrants who became the first woman and woman of colour to be vice-president, is “a lot of the reason people support her.“But you’ve got to back that up with: ‘What are you going to do?’”In fact, Harris made a strong start to the Democratic primary in 2019, landing memorable blows on Biden in the first debate when she brought up the veteran senator and former vice-president’s historic opposition to “busing”, a way of compelling racial integration in public schools.“There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools,” Harris said, onstage in Miami, “and she was bused to school every day, and that little girl was me.”But Harris failed to capitalise with policy proposals or further profitable attacks and though Biden forgave her, overruling reported opposition among aides and from his wife to pick Harris as his running mate, reports of tension and Harris’s frustrations as vice-president have been a feature of their time in power.The White House has repeatedly denied such reports concerning Biden and Harris’s working relationship and alleged dysfunction in Harris’s office.Biden and Harris are set to form the Democratic ticket again this year.Polling, however, shows widespread concern that at 81, Biden is too old to properly prosecute a potentially historic campaign, with Donald Trump seemingly set to be the Republican nominee once more.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPolling also shows low approval numbers for Harris. Republicans, particularly Trump’s closest challenger, Nikki Haley, have made the prospect of her taking power a central campaign theme.Walker and Luppen report speculation that Harris could line up a 2028 bid on a ticket with Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary who won the Iowa caucuses in 2020.A former Buttigieg staffer is quoted as saying Harris has established “a personal relationship with Pete in a way that she doesn’t with other people”.But alleged people problems, familiar from reports about Harris’s campaign and her time as vice-president, also surface in Walker and Luppen’s book.“The problems Harris and her team had experienced on her campaign had persisted during her time as vice-president,” the authors write.“Harris saw heavy staff turnover, with aides describing a toxic climate riven with factionalism and mismanagement. One source who worked for the vice-president declined to go on record or even discuss matters anonymously, due to the heated atmosphere around the office.“They refused to characterise the experience of working for Harris, apart from offering a three-word assessment. It was, they said: ‘Game of Thrones’.” More

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      ‘Ready to rumble’: Trump holds Iowa campaign rally more akin to victory lap

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      It was a melancholy farewell. Three years ago this week, Donald Trump departed on Air Force One for the last time as Frank Sinatra’s My Way blared from loudspeakers. The outgoing US president was defeated, disgraced and seemingly down and out.Amid the snowy plains of Iowa, however, Trump is set to pull off one of the most improbable of all political comebacks. On Sunday, he held a campaign rally more akin to a victory lap in a state where Republican caucus-goers look certain to back him for a swift return to the White House.Despite freezing temperatures and icy roads, the event at a college campus in Indianola drew more than 500 supporters in heavy winter coats and hats, filling the room to capacity and forcing some to watch on a big screen in an overspill auditorium. Some had driven from more than a hundred miles away.“You didn’t need a plug-in to get energised in there,” said Gary Leffler, 62, wearing a white cap with “Trump caucus captain” sewn in gold lettering. “I mean, it was electric. It was powerful. People were ramped up. We’re ready to rumble.“Everyone is asking, hey, are Iowans going to get out and caucus tomorrow night? Well, I’m telling you what, it was -48 windchill factor and look at the crowd. The room was full. People couldn’t get in. They had overflow. I’m telling you, that is the energy, that is the magnetism that Trump has.”The rally dwarfed those of Trump’s Republican rivals. He looks set to win Iowa’s first-in-nation vote in the Republican presidential nomination race by a record margin on Monday night. A final poll by renowned Iowa pollster Ann Selzer shows Trump with the support of 48% of likely caucus-goers, followed by Nikki Haley at 20%, Ron DeSantis at 16% and Vivek Ramaswamy at 8%.Such figures suggest that commentators were too quick to write Trump’s political obituary in 2021, underestimating the deep reservoirs of support he enjoys in socially conservative states such as Iowa. Not even the deadly January 6 insurrection, four sprawling criminal investigations and mediocre results for Republicans in midterm elections have been able to loosen his grip on the party.Some speak wistfully of Trump’s first term and regard him an antidote to a perceived malaise under Joe Biden on issues such as rising prices and border security. They reject the notion that Trump is an aspiring dictator and threat to democracy.Robyn Copeland, 68, a librarian wearing a red Trump sweater, said: “He was so successful in his first term that we need him back again. He knows how to govern and lead. Biden does not. Biden is failing and ailing. so we need strength and we need integrity. I think Trump’s all that, even though people keep throwing him under the bus with all these fraudulent lawsuits and charges.”Like many here, Copeland is untroubled by Trump’s status as the first former US president to face criminal charges. “They’ve been smearing him, trying to ruin him for the last four, six years now but I’ve always liked him and that’s not going to change.“I don’t care about his personality. I like his credentials. He’s a businessman. We need to run the country like a business and we need to know our, deficits and credits and all those good things. He knows how to negotiate with the world, by the way, which is really important because we’ve got a lot of enemies out there.”Trump, 77, delivered a typically meandering, disjointed and falsehood-laced speech for an hour and a half, ranging from the proximity of a third world war to lambasting Washington as “a rat-infested, graffiti-infested shithole”. He welcomed the presence of rightwing extremists Laura Loomer and Nigel Farage and lavished praise on both.At a crucial moment in a White House campaign fuelled by retribution and vengeance, he told the crowd in Iowa: “These caucuses are your personal chance to score the ultimate victory over all of the liars, cheaters, thugs, perverts, frauds, crooks, freaks, creeps and other quite nice people.”Trump took swipes at “crooked” Joe Biden and Barack “Hussein” Obama as well as his Republican primary rivals. “Unlike Ron and Nikki, we will always protect Medicare and social security for our great seniors. We are not going to hurt our seniors,” he said.He accused DeSantis of disloyalty for challenging him after Trump had endorsed DeSantis for governor of Florida. He claimed that Haley is working for “people that don’t necessarily love our country”, adding: “She’s got some really bad money behind her.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump also unveiled two endorsements: Wisconsin congressman Derrick Van Orden and North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, who dropped out of the Republican primary race last month. Burgum told the crowd: “Under President Trump, America was safe and prosperous.” For some there were echoes of 2016, when Republican rivals toppled like dominoes in backing Trump.The rally was briefly disrupted by young protesters shouting “You’ve taken millions! and “Trump, climate criminal”. One held a black-and-yellow banner before being quickly hustled from the room by guards. Trump supporters responded with loud shouts of “Trump! Trump!” and “USA, USA!”The former president, who has long questioned the scientific consensus on climate change, told one of the protesters to “go home to mommy” as she was being escorted out and describing her as “young and immature”. He told the crowd: “They’re fighting oil. They’re basically saying let’s close up on our country.”Trump, who claimed that the stock market is only performing well because he is leading in opinion polls, urged his supporters to turn out despite what is expected to be the coldest night in the history of the Iowa caucuses. “You can’t sit at home,” he said. “If you’re sick as a dog … Even if you vote and then pass away.”People at the rally expressed determination to beat the weather and send Trump on his way to the Republican nomination. Cathy Kurtinitis, 69, wearing a caucus captain cap, said: “I believe that he has done great things for America. I believe he deserves a second chance and that he will be the biggest fighter for America and give us strong foreign policy and make America great again.”Asked for her views on Biden, Kurtinitis replied: “Corrupt, corrupt, corrupt, making money from China and his son making money from Burisma, and that’s not a problem but Donald Trump said something wrong, supposedly a quid pro quo on a telephone call, and the whole world goes crazy. No, there’s such a double standard. Joe Biden’s family is very corrupt.” (Republican congressional members so far have no evidence on the Burisma issue.)Mike Schultz, 74, retired from agricultural business, dismissed the 91 criminal charges that hang over Trump’s head and threaten to disrupt his campaign schedule. “They’re bogus. Everything they’ve tried to accuse him of the entire time he was president turned out to be false. They’re bogus because the radical opposition is so afraid of him getting back into power, they’ll do anything they can to stop him.”A common view among the base is that Biden’s America is not working for them and only Trump can fix it. David Burnell, 32, a millwright in the construction trade, said: “I liked the first go round we had with him so I’d like to see the second go round with him.“Have you seen our border? Have you seen inflation? We’ve got 3 million people a year coming across the border illegally. Inflation is outrageous. Interest rates are through the roof. The stock market might be decent right now, but what’s it matter when inflation is so high? I’m making more money I’ve ever made my life, I’m broker than I’ve ever been. It’s just the way it is.” 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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      Asa Hutchinson on staying in the race and the Republican party: ‘We’re in trouble’

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      Asa Hutchinson spent Friday night at a rodeo in Des Moines, watching cowboys ride broncos while holding on for dear life. “You have to only hold on to the horse with one hand and so you’ve always got to be keeping the other hand up, and you’ve got to do that for eight seconds with that bronco bucking like crazy,” Hutchinson explains. “One of them decided to preserve themselves and so grabbed hold with two hands. They’re disqualified.”America in the Donald Trump years can feel like a wild horse trying to throw off its rider but Hutchinson is still clinging on with one hand. He has made around 60 trips to a hundred cities in Iowa over the past year in a long shot bid for the White House. He has embarked on a solemn crusade against Trump in a state where the former president retains a cult-like following.But he enjoys one advantage over his nemesis: whereas Trump has set impossibly high expectations for Monday’s Iowa caucuses, Hutchinson’s performance will disappoint no one: his support stands at 1% in the final NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll. Jonathan Capehart, a host on the MSNBC network, admitted on Saturday: “I’d forgotten that Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, is still in the race.”If life is tough at the top, it can also be hard at the bottom. Over a lunch of chicken and a waffle with syrup at a restaurant in snowy dowtown Des Moines, Hutchinson recalls his struggle earlier that morning for votes in the Iowa caucuses, which require people to show up in person – no absentee voting is allowed.“Somebody said, this lady here is about ready to support you but she has a few questions. So I call her up, spend 25 minutes answering very detailed questions on how I’m going to constrain the growth of federal government and on and on and on, even covering abortion issues and so on. And at the end of it, she says she’s about to get in the car to go to Florida. I said, you mean you’re not going to be in the caucus next week? And she said, no, but I’ll vote for you in November!”They don’t make Republicans like Hutchinson any more. Last year the Politico website called him “the most normal Republican presidential candidate”. He calls himself a “Ronald Reagan conservative”, appointed by Reagan as the youngest US attorney in the country at the time at the age of 31. He served in Congress and was head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in the George W Bush administration. Like Bill Clinton, he had two terms as governor of Arkansas.Now 73, Hutchinson launched his White House bid in April in his hometown of Bentonville, pledging to reform federal law enforcement agencies and “bring out the best of America”. He also called on Trump, who had just been indicted by a grand jury in New York over hush money payments, to drop out of the race, contending that the office is more important than any individual.“I believe in traditional conservative principles and Donald Trump has tried to reshape our party into an ego-driven machine that I don’t think reflects well in our country or our party,” he says.In some ways Hutchinson’s past election campaigns in Arkansas, another agricultural state with a similar sized population, were good preparation for Iowa. He has smaller resources than any other candidate but leanness has an upside: fewer cost overheads and fewer bills to pay. As of last September, he had spent less than $1m.“What has been helpful to us is that we didn’t build a Boeing 737 aircraft to campaign on,” he says cheerfully. “We built a Cessna and so it takes a lot less money to keep the Cessna in the air than it does the Boeing.”Despite the metaphor, Hutchinson has often taken long road trips while rival candidates are flying, sometimes in his own car or the cheapest rental available. The New York Times newspaper noted that once, when his flight from Chicago to Des Moines was cancelled, Hutchinson pooled his money with three strangers to rent a car and drove to Iowa for his campaign stops. Glamorous it isn’t.“If you’re a well-funded campaign you’re going to have advanced teams and support but, if you don’t have mega-donors behind you, you’re driving with volunteers or campaign staff three hours to a city in northern Iowa, making calls as you go to donors across the country, making sure that you can keep a campaign going.“You get there and you might have a small crowd. You might be at a Pizza Ranch and you make your case and you take names and you build your organisation one step at a time.”Still, like others before him, Hutchinson found that Iowans take their first-in-the-nation responsibility serious and ask detailed questions about border security and other issues. “I spoke to a group of law students and one of the questions was, what’s your position on the Jones Act? I hadn’t thought about the Jones Act since I was in law school and I’m not sure I thought about it then because I didn’t study maritime law.”There are also differences from state to state. “Here in Iowa, you don’t get asked about climate change and, if you do it is, ‘You don’t really believe in that, do you?’ But in New Hampshire you campaign and they’re very serious about it and you’ve got to pay attention to the consistency of your answers.”If history does remember Hutchinson’s quixotic campaign, it will be for what he didn’t do one night in August in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At the first Republican primary debate – the only one for which Hutchinson qualified – moderator Bret Baier asked the eight candidates if they would still support Trump if he is convicted in any of the four criminal cases against him but still nominated.The hands of Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley and Doug Burgum rose in unison. Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence appeared to hesitate but then did likewise. Chris Christie made a strange gesture and claimed that he was wagging his finger. Hutchinson alone kept his hand firmly at his side.What did that moment tell him about the Republican party? “We’re in trouble and it’s actually gotten worse since then. I’m the only candidate in the race that hasn’t promised a pardon to Donald Trump and that’s so fundamental: you don’t promise pardons in the middle of a political campaign.“Secondly, it undermines our justice system where a jury’s going to determine this and for pardons to be out there in the middle of a debate diminishes the importance of what’s happening in the courtroom.”Taking such a stand, Hutchinson could be forgiven for feeling lonely. But he says: “It was lonely when I was about the only Republican in Arkansas. It’s a red state now but when I finished law school, I was told if you’re going to have any career in the law as a judge or a prosecutor, you’d better be a Democrat.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It was a totally blue state – Clinton was the governor – and I fought a very lonely battle building a Republican party in Arkansas and we were successful at that. I’m used to fighting battles that are uphill but important and I see this the same way.”Hutchinson voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 but could not stomach the election lies that came in the build-up to and immediately after the incumbent president’s defeat by Joe Biden. “When I saw his refusal to acknowledge the election, but also even the refusal to go to the inauguration, that was un-American to me.“It’s not leadership. I made sure I was there at that inaugural just to showcase the peaceful transfer of power is important and the fact that, even as Republicans, we want the best for America.”Like many, Hutchinson assumed that Trump was washed up after the January 6 insurrection as senior Republicans including Kevin McCarthy finally appeared to break from him. “But then shortly after those clear statements of rebuke and holding him accountable and indicating he’s finished then all of a sudden you see them running down to Mar-a-Lago and empowering him again and so that was almost as a tragic day as January 6. They went down there and kissed the ring.”Since then Trump and his allies have spent three years rewriting the history of January 6. Republicans filibustered the creation of a 9/11-style commission to investigate it and dismissed a congressional committee as a partisan exercise. When Trump was indicted over his part in the insurrection, Republicans bought into his claim of a “weaponised” justice system. He has recently taken to describing rioters who were prosecuted and imprisoned as “hostages”.Hutchinson reflects: “It’s shocking and troubling because this is not something we have to wonder about what happened. We all saw it with our own eyes. It was an attack on police. It was an attack on the rule of law and it was an attack on the Congress.“There’s no doubt what that was and it was not a patriotic act and for Donald Trump to put forth that lie is dismaying, but it’s even more troubling that so many are buying into that language. Whenever I think of hostages, I think of our American citizens and other world citizens that are hostages right now in the tunnels in Palestine by Hamas. What happened that day was not patriotic and those people who did it are not hostages.”As former congresswoman Liz Cheney and others have discovered, such expressions of dissent are regarded as heresy in the Make America great again universe. But on the campaign trail in Iowa, Hutchinson’s conversations with Trump supporters were cordial.He found that they compare the ex-president’s economy favourably with Biden’s and regard him as the unfairly treated victim of a politically biased establishment. But they also expressed concern about his legal woes and whether he can win a general election.“Many of them said, ‘Yeah, I’m for Trump, I know he’s got real problems but I like his policies, I just wish he’d keep his mouth shut.’ You hear that a lot and that reflects to me some very weak support for Trump, that he’s sort of in a default position as an incumbent but if someone else surfaces that can convince them they’ve got the right policy direction for the country and is not chaotic, then those votes can be changed.”Hutchinson adds: “You’ve got Trump at 50%. There’s a question as to whether he’s going to meet those expectations on Monday night and then, secondly, you’ve got probably half of those that are subject to change as you go into this year.”Burgum, Scott, Pence and other candidates have come and gone before Iowa. Even Christie, more pugilistic in his anti-Trump mission, bowed out this week. Yet Hutchinson dutifully marches on. What will count as a good result on Monday, predicted to be the coldest caucus day ever?“You’ve just got to beat expectations. A lot of people have counted us out and so if we can exceed those expectations that should be a storyline. We’ll just have to measure wherever we finish here and see whether we’ve got a sufficient boost to create more momentum for New Hampshire and further down the line.“It’s important, particularly when the number of voices out there is diminished, that there’s someone that speaks clearly who’s in the race because this year is very unpredictable.” More