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      Kamala Harris warns US freedom is under ‘profound threat’ in MLK Jr day speech

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      Kamala Harris issued a plea to Black voters on Martin Luther King Jr Day to join with Democrats to win the 2024 election and to stave off what she said were threats to US democracy posed by Republicans who look set to overwhelmingly back Donald Trump at their first state nomination contest today in Iowa.The US vice-president, the headliner at the NAACP’s annual King Day at the Dome event in Columbia, South Carolina, said that freedom in the country is under “profound threat”, and cited the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade, long lines for voting, Republican-backed book bans and the prevalence of gun violence.“Freedom is never truly won. You earn it and win it in every generation,” she said, quoting King’s late widow, Coretta Scott King, and urging voters to “roll up our sleeves”. “We were born for a time such as this,” she said.Protesters were awaiting Harris at the venue, some waving Palestinian flags – the latest sign of dissent from typically Democratic-leaning voters that the Biden administration’s staunch backing of Israel in its attack on Gaza is angering some core supporters.South Carolina, home to a hugely influential Black voting bloc in the Democratic presidential primary, will hold its contest on 3 February. But there are signs that economic anxiety and policy disappointments are also stressing Black support: an Economist/YouGov survey recently found that only 67% of Black US adults had a favorable view of Biden.In her address, Harris said: “Today we are witnessing a full on attack on hard-fought, hard-won freedoms.” Speaking in the state once governed by Nikki Haley, a contender for the Republican presidential nomination, she passed comment on Haley’s recent gaffe when she failed to cite slavery as a cause of the civil war.“They even tried to erase, overlook and rewrite the ugly parts of our past,” Harris said, hours after the Biden-Harris re-election campaign said it had raised almost $100m in the last quarter of 2023 for election spending.Earlier Monday, the Guardian quoted a former top aide to Harris during her 2020 nomination campaign, from The Truce, a soon-to-be published critique of her political skills.“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”, the aide remarked to authors Hunter Walker and Luppe B Luppen, adding that her nomination campaign was “rotten from the start”.The authors wrote that the problems Harris experienced with staff morale in 2020 had continued throughout her time as vice-president.“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,” the authors wrote. “It was, they said: ‘Game of Thrones’.”Biden meanwhile marked the holiday by volunteering for Philabundance, a hunger relief group in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The US president loaded packages with fresh fruit and milk on to a conveyer belt in a warehouse.In a radio interview with Black civil rights advocate the Rev Al Sharpton on SiriusXM, Biden said Trump was a motivating factor in his decision to seek re-election, saying: “Trump is just saying things that are off the wall.”Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Iowa caucuses 2024 live: Trump ramps up attacks on Haley and DeSantis as voters battle cold to pick Republican candidate

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      It’s a bracing day in Iowa as the caucus gatherings approach later on Monday, and there are other items of US politics news occurring too, all brought to you as they happen. We are here, live, to bring you all the events.Here’s where things stand:
      Economy, border, foreign policy are key issues as Iowans head to caucus, with Republican voters in the Hawkeye state saying these themes are top of mind as they prepare to caucus tonight in the US’s first nominating contest.
      Donald Trump has stepped up his attacks on Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis on the morning of the day Iowans go to vote on their Republican candidate.
      The Pentagon said the US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, has been released from hospital today. Austin, 70, had been hospitalized since 1 January due to complications after prostate cancer treatment, but there was uproar because he didn’t tell the White House (or many others) about it.
      Iowa Republicans will brave brutally cold temperatures on Monday evening to participate in the state’s presidential caucuses, as Donald Trump remains the clear frontrunner in the race for his party’s nomination. The final results will depend on turnout, which could be acutely impacted by the weather.
      Iowans have been told to “limit outdoor exposure” as much as possible with forecasters saying the wind chill temperature could go down to as low as -35F on Monday evening in the “dangerous cold”.
      The 2024 US presidential election begins in earnest in Iowa today. The final Des Moines Register/NBC News poll before Monday night’s caucuses found former president, Donald Trump, maintaining a formidable lead over his opponents, supported by 48% of likely caucus-goers. After trailing the two-term Florida governor, Ron DeSantis for months, the latest poll showed Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, in second place in Iowa, winning the support of 20% of likely Republican caucus-goers, compared to DeSantis’s 16%, with Vivek Ramaswamy at 8%.
      Donald Trump Jr and girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle are running very late for a campaign stop at a bar in Ankeny, Iowa. “Do you think we’ll still make it to the caucus?” one anxious supporter asked the Guardian.Patiently hanging on is Blake Marnell, 59, who works in sales and lives in San Diego, California. He is one of the peculiar characters thrown up by the Trump era: he is wearing his trademark brick-patterned suit, a symbol of his support for Trump’s border wall, along with a “Maga” cap signed by Trump.He says the suit was marketed in Britain for stag parties and he bought it off the internet. “These are suits made for bachelor parties in London where the lads all want to go out for a night drinking but the dress code at the club says you must wear suits, so there’s this industry of semi-disposable suits with garish patterns.”Marnell estimates he has been to between 35 and 40 Trump rallies and confidently predicts the former president will win the Iowa caucuses. “I believe President Trump will win. I think everybody knows that so the real question is by how much? If you go by polling, I think that he will be over 50%.”The “Brick Man” is also looking forward to seeing the president’s eldest son in action soon. “He’s an excellent speaker for President Trump, for his father, because one thing that a lot of President Trump’s surrogates don’t have but Donald Trump Jr does have is they share the same sense of humour: at times irreverent, at times offensive to some people, at times perhaps people might think it’s a little bit too much, but if you’re a fan of President Trump and his humour, you’re also going to be a fan of Don Jr.“The politician that supports President Trump won’t have the freedom or the latitude to say things because they have to worry about their constituency back home and how that impacts their office. Donald Trump Jr? No filters. He can say what he wants to say. He can say what he’s feeling and people understand that and they gravitate towards him.”Vice-President Kamala Harris said “freedom is under profound threat” in a speech in South Carolina to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr Day.The vice-president spoke as Republicans campaigned around Iowa in the final push to sway voters before the caucus began this evening. Democrats aren’t holding an Iowa caucus this year, after shifting their calendar to make South Carolina the first official primary because Iowa and New Hampshire’s voters don’t represent the diversity of the party. Republicans set their Iowa caucus on MLK day to maintain its status as the first election contest, but the fact that it was a federal holiday didn’t seem to enter into the decision.Harris cited MLK’s iconic “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, where the civil rights leader wrote that “the goal of America is freedom”.“And so, as we gather to honor his legacy, I pose a question I believe Dr. King would today ask: In 2024, where exactly is America in our fight for freedom?…As Vice President of the United States, I’d say: At this moment, in America, freedom is under profound threat,” she said.Speaking at an NAACP event, Harris sought to make the case that supporting Democrats in this year’s elections would protect freedoms in the wake of attacks on reproductive rights, book bans and voting rights. She implored attendees to join the fight against these restrictions by voting blue in 2024.“This generation now has fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers,” she said. “It is not hypothetical that from kindergarten to 12th grade, this generation has had to endure active shooter drills. Our children, who should be in a classroom fulfilling their God-given potential and exploring their wonder for the beauty of the world, instead have to worry that someone might burst through their classroom door with a gun. It is not hypothetical. When students go to vote, they often have to wait in line for hours because of laws that intentionally make it more difficult for them to cast a ballot.”Shortly after that, the Biden campaign’s press conference wrapped up.We’re now four hours away from the start of the Republican caucuses in Iowa’s 99 counties, and you can expect the Biden campaign will speak up again once their choice becomes clear.JB Pritzker was asked about Joe Biden’s persistent unpopularity.The president’s approval rating has been underwater for more than two-and-a-half years, and has lately lurked in the low 40% range. The factors behind this trend are myriad and include Biden’s advanced age as well as the hangover from the record inflation Americans experienced in 2022, but the trend has been enough to make many Democrats nervous about his bid to win another four years in the White House.Pritzker argued that polls don’t yet reflect the reality of the presidential race, since the Republican nominee hasn’t yet been decided.“Until we see that we won’t know really what the numbers are,” the governor said (though many pollsters have surveyed how the president would perform against various Republicans, including Donald Trump, who some polls have found voters prefer.)
      But I can tell you this, that it’s Joe Biden that’s delivered for the American public, it’s Joe Biden that’s got an awful lot to brag about, and I think the dangers that are posed by this Republican field will be well known to people once … one of them is chosen.
      Jeffrey Katzenberg, a movie mogul who is co-chairing the national advisory board for Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, is talking up the mammoth fundraising haul the president received in the final quarter of last year.“Last quarter, Team Biden Harris raised more than $97m and reported $117m of cash on hand,” Katzenberg said.
      It means team Biden-Harris is entering the election year with more cash on hand than any democratic candidate in history.
      He said the Biden campaign’s financial firepower now dwarfs his Republican rivals, no matter who that may be, and allows them to focus their efforts on winning the November general election. Katzenberg said:
      Republicans are spending money in a race for the Maga base without a single dime going towards the voters who will ultimately decide the general election. By the time they are finished with the primary and Donald Trump or whichever extremists is finally in a position where they can start trying to compete with us, it’s just going to be too late.
      The Minnesota senator Tina Smith laid into the Republican field, saying all the candidates had plans to cut off access to abortion.
      We know one thing for sure. Every one of these extremist candidates is attacking women’s freedom to make their own decisions about abortion. These extreme Republican candidates want a national ban on abortion, and that is what they will try to do if given the chance.
      The reality is that none of these candidates trust women to make their own decisions about abortion because they believe that they know and that is why we cannot trust them to be president.
      The Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, is up at the podium first, and saying that all Republican candidates competing in tonight’s caucus are ignoring the country’s needs and espousing extremist policies. Pritzker said:
      Here we stand on Martin Luther King Jr Day, and this field of candidates is espousing Adolf Hitler’s ideas, denying that … the civil war was about slavery, or demonizing and discounting the rights of large groups of Americans. All of these Republican candidates are singing the same, terrible song.
      In an apparent reference to Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and sole woman in the Republican race, and the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, who has been accused of wearing footwear that boosts his stature, Pritzker said:
      Tonight’s contest is simply a question of whether you like your Maga Trump agenda wrapped in the original packaging with high heels, or with lifts in their boots.
      While everyone will be watching who Iowa Republicans select as their nominee tonight, Joe Biden’s re-election campaign is in town to, in their words, “remind voters what’s at stake this November as Donald Trump and Maga Republicans launch an all-out assault on Americans’ freedoms”.They’ve got some Democratic heavy hitters speaking to the press this afternoon at the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines, including the Illinois governor JB Pritzker, the Minnesota senator Tina Smith and Jeffrey Katzenberg, co-chair of the Biden-Harris campaign’s national advisory board.I am in the room and will let you know what they have to say.Precinct captains in Iowa will try to persuade caucus voters tonight to pick their preferred candidate, a practice common to the Iowa caucuses but not typical of US elections otherwise.Candidates work to have volunteer caucus captains at all precinct voting sites, usually local schools or community gathering places. Those captains whip votes at the precinct, speechifying and debating with voters who are unsure who to vote for or could be swayed from one candidate to another.Outside the caucus process, it’s usually illegal to actively campaign at a polling site.This year, Trump’s precinct captains are donning white hats with “Trump Caucus Captain” written in gold lettering. The hats were given to 2,000 caucus captains and have become “the hottest item in Maga world”, Politico reported.The precinct captains, while their role is important on caucus day, are typically regular Iowa voters who volunteer to help their preferred candidate because they’re passionate about that person winning. They’re often seen as people who can influence their neighbors at the hyperlocal precinct sites.Sometimes, the New York Times writes in its feature about caucus captains, the captains can be more high-profile. “One of Ron DeSantis’s captains is a former co-chairman of the Iowa Republican Party, and one of Nikki Haley’s is a state senator,” the paper notes.Climate activists from the Sunrise Movement protested outside a diner near Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, where Nikki Haley was addressing supporters today. More

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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. 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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) 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Titlepiece”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GTGuardianTitlepiece-Bold.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GTGuardianTitlepiece-Bold.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GTGuardianTitlepiece-Bold.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:700;font-style:normal} More

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      ‘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