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      Trump maintains huge Iowa polling lead as Nikki Haley gains ground

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      Donald Trump maintained his huge lead in the crucial early voting state of Iowa in a major new poll by NBC News and the Des Moines Register but Nikki Haley is now emerging as his closest challenger.The former US president has a 27-point lead in Iowa three months before the first vote of the Republican primary as he attracted 43% support. But Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, climbed 10 points to 16%, sharing second place with Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor whose campaign has long been seen to be stalling.No other candidate scored significantly, even after second choices of supporters of Mike Pence, the former vice-president who suspended his campaign, were reapportioned.J Ann Selzer, the Iowa pollster who conducted the survey, said: “This is a good poll for Donald Trump. For all the things that happened between the last poll and now, he’s still the dominant player in the field and his standing has, in fact, improved from August.”Trump’s memory apparently hasn’t improved, though. In Sioux City on Sunday, he told supporters: “Well, thank you very much. And a very big hello to a place where we’ve done very well: Sioux Falls. Thank you very much, Sioux Falls.”A state senator, Brad Zaun, whispered: “It’s Sioux City, not Sioux Falls.”Trump said: “Oh … is that right?”To the crowd, he said: “So Sioux City, let me ask you: how many people come from Sioux City?”Trump is 77 but polling shows fewer Americans think he is too old for a second term than think so about Joe Biden, the president who turns 81 next month. Trump has made Biden’s age an anvil for his campaign to hammer but both men are closely watched for errors.In Sioux City, bragging about his relationships with authoritarian world leaders, Trump said Hungary “fronts on both Ukraine and Russia”. Hungary does not have a border with Russia.Haley has made foreign policy smarts part of her pitch to voters, strong debate performances also helping her rise.In the NBC/Register poll, she climbed 10 points from the same survey in August as DeSantis fell by three. Other candidates fell (the South Carolina senator Tim Scott from 9% to 7%, the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie from 5% to 4%) or stagnated (the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy sticking at 4%).Haley was the second choice of 17% of likely caucus-goers, with 22% more saying they would consider her.Kristy Beckwith, 60 and from Ankeny, said: “I feel like she’s fresh, and I liked what she said about … the things that she did as governor of South Carolina … she’s a strong woman.”Trump faces 91 criminal charges, including for state and federal election subversion, and assorted civil trials. Nonetheless, he has increased his lead in the NBC/Register poll. In August, he led DeSantis by 23 points. He now leads by 27.Evangelical Christians remain a key Iowa voting bloc. Despite Trump facing criminal charges over hush-money payments to a porn star and a civil trial arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”, 65% of respondents to the NBC/Register poll said such legal problems would not stop him winning a general election.Trump enjoys bigger leads elsewhere. On Monday, the fivethirtyeight.com national polling average put Trump at 57%: 43% clear of DeSantis and 49% up on Haley. More

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      Efforts to keep ‘insurrectionist’ Trump off 2024 ballot to be heard in court

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      A multi-pronged effort to keep Donald Trump off the 2024 presidential ballot as an insurrectionist resumes in earnest, beginning with a court case in Colorado on Monday, the first of two states that will hear legal arguments this week.Those seeking to have the former president ruled ineligible are relying on a civil war-era provision of the 14th amendment to the US constitution that states no person can hold public office if they “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof”.They argue that Trump’s incitement of the deadly 6 January attack on the US Capitol, in which his supporters attempted to block Congress certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, perfectly encapsulates the clause that has yet to be seriously tested in a courtroom.In Denver on Monday, and in Minnesota’s supreme court on Thursday, hearings will commence in cases that could ultimately end up in the US supreme court, regardless of which side wins in the lower court. The rulings are likely to be swiftly appealed, dragging the cases out with next year’s general election only 12 months away.“We’ve had hearings with presidential candidates debating their eligibility before – Barack Obama, Ted Cruz, John McCain,” said Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, listing candidates challenged on whether they met the constitutional requirement of being a “natural-born citizen”.But the arguments against Trump, he said, rely on an obscure clause of the constitution with an “incendiary” bar against insurrection. “Those legal questions are very heavy ones,” he said, noting that even if they are seen as long shots, they raise important issues and have a plausible legal path to success.Among those who support the argument for Trump’s removal from the ballot are the Virginia senator Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 running mate, who told ABC last month that the “language is specific” in the 14th amendment clause.“In my view, the attack on the Capitol that day was designed for a particular purpose at a particular moment and that was to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power as is laid out in the constitution,” he said.“So I think there is a powerful argument to be made.”Dozens of cases citing the amendment have been filed in recent months, but the ones in Colorado and Minnesota seem the most important, according to legal experts. They were filed by two liberal groups with significant resources, and in states with a clear, swift process for challenges to candidates’ ballot qualifications.That means the Colorado and Minnesota cases are taking a more legally sound route to get courts to force election officials to disqualify Trump, in contrast to other lawsuits that seek a sweeping ruling from federal judges that Trump is no longer eligible for the presidency.The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) watchdog group filed the Colorado lawsuit. “By instigating this unprecedented assault on the American constitutional order, Trump violated his oath and disqualified himself under the 14th Amendment from holding public office, including the office of the president,” its filing states.Trump’s lawyers say the provision has not been used in 150 years, and the plaintiffs are interpreting it incorrectly. They contend it was never meant to apply to the office of president, which is not mentioned in the text, unlike “senator or representative in Congress” and “elector of president and vice-president”.They also insist Trump never “engaged in insurrection” and was simply exercising his free speech rights to warn about election results he did not believe were legitimate.The then president was impeached for a historic second time in 2021 for inciting the attack on the Capitol, though he was acquitted by the US Senate.Trump has been predictably dismissive. “This is like a banana republic,” he told the conservative radio host Dan Bongino last month. “And what they’re doing is, it’s called election interference. Now the 14th amendment is just a continuation of that. It’s nonsense.”The arguments in Colorado could feature testimony from witnesses to the 6 January 2021 attack, and other moves by Trump to overturn his 2020 election defeat. He is already facing charges in a federal case in Washington DC and a state case being heard in Fulton county, Georgia, over those efforts.Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Mike Pence’s exit from White House bid is winnowing of crowded field, rivals say

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      Mike Pence’s surprise withdrawal from the Republican presidential nomination race on Saturday is part of natural winnowing of the crowded field, rivals of the former vice-president said Sunday – and one that could help their quest of candidates to wrestle the nomination from overwhelming frontrunner Donald Trump.“In the end, the race is narrowing, which everyone said it would,” said former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, one of Trump’s fiercest Republican critics and one of four who have qualified for a third TV debate next month in Miami that may not have included Pence, who, he told CNN’s State of the Union, had run “a tough race, a good race”.The former vice-president’s decision to make an early exit may also have been influenced by fundraising difficulties he was known to be having. Announcing his departure from the field saying it had “become clear” he did not have a path to victory, he vowed to help elect “principled Republican leaders”.Christie, who is at 3.1% support in primary polling, put his finger on Pence’s fundamental misalignment – accepting Trump’s hand as his running mate in 2016, resisting his boss on January 6th, then defending his administration record while simultaneously urging his party to turn away from Trump populism and back to conservative values.“There are people who want to have it both ways,” Christie continued his comments to CNN on Sunday. “They want to support him … on the other hand they want to go after him.”But Christie also carries that burden, having sought a cabinet appointment in the Trump administration in 2016.The former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley is widely presumed to be the main beneficiary of Pence’s exit. In a speech on Saturday, the former US ambassador to the UN praised Pence as a “good man of faith” who had “fought for America and he has fought for Israel”.Haley’s polling is rising amid endorsements from Republican politicians and pundits prepared to break with Trump. “She’s breaking through at the right moment,” Republican strategist Mike Murphy told Politico last week. “Everything else has been ridiculous preseason coverage … I think it all starts now.”According to FiveThirtyEight, Haley is polling in third place nationally at 8% among registered Republican voters behind Florida governor Ron DeSantis, at 14%. But support for DeSantis is falling. In the key early primary state of New Hampshire Haley beats DeSantis 19% to 10%, according to a recent survey.But both DeSantis and Haley, along with Vivek Ramaswamy and Christie, still hugely trail Trump at 58% support nationally – and the Maga king’s support only seems to grow with each criminal and civil indictment he is served.Governor DeSantis also rallied behind Pence, calling him “a principled man of faith who has worked tirelessly to advance the conservative cause” in a post on X.After Pence stepped aside, Trump called on him for his endorsement: “I don’t know about Mike Pence. He should endorse me. You know why? Because I had a great, successful presidency and he was the vice-president.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the former president also took a swipe at his Christian fundamentalist vice-president, who refused to help in a scheme to overturn the 2020 election and held the confirmation vote after the Capitol building had been cleared of January 6 protesters.“People in politics can be very disloyal,” Trump said at a rally in Sioux City, Iowa, according to The Hill.Pence’s exit is also a stark reminder of Trump’s hold over the party: former vice-presidents are typically seen as a formidable primary challengers. But in recent years, that assumption has weakened.Neither Al Gore, Dick Cheney, Joe Biden, or now Pence, have automatically managed or sought to immediately trade in the vice-presidency for the presidency.But as ABC News political contributor Donna Brazile pointed out on Sunday, Pence did not resonate with voters – a former vice-president who was unable to get traction, raise money or distinguish himself. “He tried to change the dynamics of the Republican party but it’s not changing. It’s now behind Donald Trump come trial or tribulations.” More

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      Does Biden’s unwavering support for Israel risk his chance for re-election?

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      Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.On Wednesday night, Joe Biden basked in the pageantry of a state dinner – white-jacketed violinists, golden chandeliers dotted with pink roses, a vivid wall display of 3D paper flowers. But soon after toasting the Australian prime minister in a pavilion on the White House south lawn, the US president had to step away to be briefed on a deadly mass shooting in Maine.The presence of Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary, and Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, was a reminder of another, even darker shadow. Even as Biden and guests savoured butternut squash soup, sarsaparilla braised short ribs and hazelnut and chocolate mousse cake, Israeli bombs were raining down on the people of Gaza, posing one of the biggest tests yet for the 80-year-old commander-in-chief.Biden took office in January 2021 articulating four crises – the coronavirus pandemic, economic strife, racial injustice and the climate – but as many of his predecessors discovered, the one guarantee of the job is the unexpected. Since Hamas’s horrific attack on Israel on 7 October, the president has found himself in the crucible of a Middle East war that is killing innocents and threatening a broader conflagration.Biden has given Israel full-throated support and urged Congress to send the US ally $14bn in military aid. He has stressed that Hamas does not represent the vast majority of the Palestinian people and pushed for humanitarian assistance. But he is resisting calls for a ceasefire. He is trying to thread a diplomatic needle, knowing that each decision reverberates around the world and one mistake could cost him re-election next year.“Biden’s been at the top of his game – pitch perfect, morally clear, decisive – but there are real risks to having no daylight between the US and Israel,” said Chris Whipple, author of The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House. “We’re starting to see that now with all the civilian casualties that are mounting.”“It reminds me of Colin Powell’s old Pottery Barn rule: if you break it, you own it. Along with Israel, the US is going to own the spectacle of Palestinian civilians being killed no matter how ‘surgical’ the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] claims to be and we’re already seeing that.”Biden’s allegiance to Israel is written in his political DNA. He was born during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt when, in Europe, the Nazis were systematically murdering 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. Biden has said how his father helped instill in him the justness of establishing Israel as a Jewish homeland in 1948.His long political career has long included deep engagement with the Israeli-Arab conflict in the Middle East. He has often told the story of his 1973 encounter with Israel’s then prime minister Golda Meir who, on the cusp of the Yom Kippur war, told the young senator that Israel’s secret weapon was “we have no place else to go”.During 36 years in the Senate, Biden was the chamber’s biggest ever recipient of donations from pro-Israeli groups, taking in $4.2m, according to the Open Secrets database. As vice-president, he mediated the rocky relationship between Barack Obama and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Brett Bruen, a former global engagement director for the administration, recalled: “I remember in the Obama White House how pissed off we were at Netanyahu for coming to town and addressing a joint session of Congress without so much as a heads-up. The animosity towards Netanyahu among the current national security staff at the White House is palpable and yet obviously it isn’t about personalities, it isn’t about politics – it’s about the principles that are at stake here.”Biden’s own relationship with Netanyahu is hardly uncomplicated. He recently recalled how, as a young senator, he had written on a photo of himself and Netanyahu: “Bibi, I love you. I don’t agree with a damn thing you say.”That point was illustrated in recent months with the White House echoing Israeli opponents of Netanyahu’s plan to curb the powers of the country’s supreme court. All that was put aside, however, after 7 October when Hamas gunmen killed 1,400 people and took more than 200 hostages.Standing beneath a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, Biden gave one of the most visceral, heartfelt speeches of his presidency, denouncing “an act of sheer evil” by Hamas and insisting “the United States has Israel’s back”. It was received rapturously in Israel and helped to quell any scepticism about where the president stood.Biden then travelled to Israel, marking his second visit as president to an active war zone not under US military control after a trip to Ukraine earlier this year. In Tel Aviv, he met Netanyahu and his war cabinet and displayed his celebrated empathy as he comforted victims’ families.He compared the 7 October assault to the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US that killed nearly 3,000 people. But he added: “I caution this: while you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it. After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. And while we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”Biden’s gambit was widely reported to be a public embrace of Netanyahu while trying to restrain him behind the scenes – including with US military advisers – so as to mitigate the civilian death toll, avoid complicating the release of American hostages and prevent the war from spreading into a regional conflict.Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said: “He has chosen the classic diplomatic course of amity and unity in public and candour in private. I think Israelis understand and appreciate that. ”The president was said by officials to have asked Netanyahu “tough questions” about what would come in the days, weeks and months after a ground invasion of Gaza. Egypt and Israel agreed to allow a limited number of trucks carrying food, water, medicine and other essentials into Gaza via the Rafah border crossing.Back in Washington, the president then tried to sell his mission to the American people, using the ultimate bully pulpit, an Oval Office address, to make a direct connection between Israel’s fight against Hamas and Ukraine’s war against Russia. The commander-in-chief said: “American leadership is what holds the world together … To put all that at risk if we walk away from Ukraine, if we turn our backs on Israel, it’s just not worth it.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the president is under pressure for a balanced approach from Arab leaders in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and beyond who have seen major protests erupt in their capitals over the crisis in Gaza.In theory, the crisis could turn Biden’s political weakness – his age – into an asset that points to his unrivalled foreign policy experience. Leon Panetta, a former defence secretary and CIA director, said: “He gets it. He understands it. He understands what I think he sees as the end game here … There’s a lot of balls in the air but if anybody understands how to basically work his way through that, it’s Joe Biden.”Keeping all the balls in the air at once can be tricky. At a Rose Garden press conference on Wednesday, he said “there has to be a vision of what comes next” – a two-state solution – and expressed alarm about extremist settlers attacking Palestinians in the West Bank, “pouring gasoline on fire”.But under questioning, he also angered some on the left by questioning the death toll in Gaza: “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed.”The Gaza-based health ministry – an agency in the Hamas-controlled government – says 7,028 Palestinians, including 2,913 minors, have been killed by the bombing. Shortages of water, electricity, fuel, food and medicine are making the humanitarian situation more catastrophic by the day and prompting a global outcry against Israel’s tactics – and the US’s unwavering support for it.Many Palestinians and others in the Arab world regard Biden as too biased in favor of Israel to act as an evenhanded peace broker. His blanket refusal to join calls for a ceasefire also risks alienating elements of his own Democratic party coalition, exposing a generational divide between Biden, who grew up knowing Israel as a vulnerable country and safe haven for Jews, and younger progressives who associate it primarily with the oppression of Palestinians.A recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that only 48% of Gen Z and millennials believe the US should publicly voice support for Israel. Protests demanding a ceasefire have erupted on university campuses across the country. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, told supporters: “President Biden, not all America is with you on this one, and you need to wake up and understand. We are literally watching people commit genocide.”Rae Abileah, a strategy consultant based in Half Moon Bay, California, argues that Biden’s words do not match his actions, which are pouring fuel on the flames. She said: “My message to President Biden, as a Jewish clergy person with family who are in Israel, is to say my grief is not your weapon. Do not use my faith or my grief to justify $14bn of military aid going to kill innocent lives.”“The big thing we have to talk about around Biden’s policies right now, and the policies of 10 US senators who flew to Tel Aviv as well, is that this is putting the blood of children in Gaza on our hands as American taxpayers. This is our responsibility. This is not about a war of Israel attacking Gaza; this is enabled with our money.”In addition, Biden is facing a backlash from Arab Americans and American Muslims. Haroon Moghul, an American Muslim academic and preacher based in Cincinnati, Ohio, said: “I voted for Biden in 2020. I thought he would be the adult in the room and right now all I see him doing is taking American resources, American political capital, American goodwill and throwing all in with the most radical Israeli government in history.”Biden’s job approval rating among Democrats has fallen 11 percentage points in the past month to 75%, according to pollster Gallup, the party’s worst assessment of the president since he took office. Gallup cited Biden’s immediate and decisive show of support for Israel as turning off some members of his own party. He is likely to face former president Donald Trump in an election a year from now.Matthew Hoh, associate director of the Eisenhower Media Network, who served as a US Marine Corps captain in Iraq, said: “Could 2, 3, 4 million progressive voters not turn out, not vote for Biden because of this? That’s absolutely possible.”Additional reporting by Lauren Gambino More

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      Romney: A Reckoning review: must-read on Mitt and the rise of Trump

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      McKay Coppins joined BuzzFeed in 2012, as its Mitt Romney reporter. The former Massachusetts governor won the Republican presidential nomination but lost the election to Barack Obama. Coppins wrote a postmortem, A Mormon Reporter on the Romney Bus. Its subtitle: How America Got Used to His Religion, and Mine.“I quickly found that my expertise in Romney’s religion posed a distinct advantage – not in access or sourcing, necessarily, but in understanding the elusive candidate as an actual person,” Coppins wrote.These days, Romney represents Utah in the US Senate. He has less than 14 months until he retires. His disdain for Donald Trump is legend. In February 2020, he sought to hold Trump accountable for abusing his power and strong-arming Ukraine, becoming the first senator ever to vote to convict a president of his own party in an impeachment trial. He voted to convict Trump again at his second trial, for inciting the January 6 insurrection.Coppins is now at the Atlantic. His new book is a must-read for anyone interested in how the Republican party morphed from the party of Lincoln into a Trumpian mess, picking up where Coppins left off in The Wilderness, his earlier look at the GOP.The 1960s set off a realignment in US politics. Over the past 60 years, resentment and tribalism have come to dominate, social issues come to the fore. In a Republican party once synonymous with the Union army and high-end suburbs, the south and evangelical protestantism now wield major influence.In the 1968 presidential race, the religion of George Romney – the Republican governor of Michigan and Mitt’s father – was a non-issue. His aspirations finally came undone after he said he had been “brainwashed” over the war in Vietnam.Mitt Romney first ran for the Republican nomination 40 years later, in 2008. Times and the party had changed. Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister as well as governor of Arkansas, went gunning for his rival’s religion.“Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?” Huckabee asked.Coppins offers an engaging read, the product of 30 interviews with Romney, interviews with aides and friends, and the senator’s emails and diaries. Chock-full of direct quotes, Romney: A Reckoning offers a window into the world of a private man who has darted in and out of the public eye.The book is also a scorching critique, singeing many. Coppins captures Romney strafing a heap of A-list Republicans. Trump and Newt Gingrich, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, Mike Pence and Chris Christie. All take direct hits. Coppins portrays their peevishness, pettiness and gutlessness – or worse – in Technicolor. Gingrich is a “smug know-it-all, smarmy, and too pleased with himself”. Cruz is “frightening”, “scary” and a “demagogue”.As for Ron DeSantis, in Romney’s estimation, the Florida governor is “much smarter than Trump”. But Romney also asks: “Do you want an authoritarian who’s smart or one who’s not smart?” Months before the primary, the party faithful have rendered their verdict. In poll after poll, Trump clobbers DeSantis.Onwards, to Pence: “No one had been more loyal, more willing to smile when he saw absurdities, more willing to ascribe God’s will to things that were ungodly.”Romney also recalls how Jared Kushner tried to convince him Trump’s erratic behavior was actually a manifestation of strategic savvy. Romney wasn’t buying. “I think he’s not smart,” he said. “I mean, really not smart.”Nonetheless, in 2012, Romney sought Trump’s endorsement. Beaten by Obama, Romney conceded on election night. Trump, though, unfurled his lie that the election was rigged. We had seen the future.To George Romney and his son, race relations mattered. The younger Romney parted with Trump after he was slow to disavow backing from David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader. Here, Coppins quotes Romney’s journal: “It is nearly certain that he will be the nominee. I am not tempted in the slightest to retreat. I will fight him on the beaches. I will fight him in the air.” Fine words – that didn’t alter the outcome.Romney then entertained the prospect of serving Trump as secretary of state, only to be publicly humiliated. He ascribes the failed gambit to “a mix of noble motivations and self-centered ones”. Said differently, he wanted the prize but refused to pay the price. “You need to say that you’ve come to the conclusion that I’m terrific,” Trump reportedly demanded. “That I’ll be a great president … We need to clear this up.”Romney would not bend the knee. But he admits: “I like being involved and being in the middle of things, and having something important to do. It’s like, you know, I wanted to be president. If you can’t be president, being secretary of state’s not a bad spot to come thereafter.”George W Bush tells Coppins Romney dodged a bullet. Now, he has little to lose. His time in the Senate ticks down. He has a fortune to enjoy. Published estimates peg him as the third-richest member of Congress, net worth hitting $300m. Yet he is not content. Washington crumbles from within. Violence and menace are coins of the realm. January 6 cemented a new political era.Jim Jordan’s run for House speaker, from the extreme right, triggered a barrage of threats for Republicans who refused to go along. Being primaried by the right is no longer the worst that could happen. On January 6, as the Capitol lay besieged, Ann Romney, Mitt’s wife, cried: “This is our country … This is our country.”
      Romney: A Reckoning is published in the US by Scribner More

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      Mike Pence suspends campaign for Republican presidential nomination

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      Mike Pence, the former vice-president under Donald Trump, has suspended his campaign to become the Republican nominee for president in the 2024 election.Pence announced at an event held by the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas on Saturday that he was dropping out of the race, in which he has been lagging, along with others, far behind frontrunner Trump.“I came here to say it’s become clear to me this is not my time, so after much prayer and deliberation I have decided to suspend my campaign for president, effective today,” Pence said.Pence, 64 and the former governor of his home state of Indiana, after representing it as one of its congressman, had been leading a struggling campaign for a while. He had not yet qualified for the third GOP debate on 8 November, falling short on required donations.But his announcement on Saturday during an event attended by other prominent candidates for the party’s nomination next year, including Trump and Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, came as a surprise to most.Appearing on the stage at the event in Nevada, Pence, a Christian hard-right conservative, said: “The Bible tells us there is a time for every purpose under heaven” and he went on to add: “This is not my time.”As he made the announcement, with a trademark absence of visible emotion, there was a collective gasp among the audience gathered at the event, which was expecting to hear rallying remarks as he continued his campaign.Instead, Pence made his announcement drily then put more power in his voice as he said: “Now, I’m leaving this campaign, but let me promise you, I will never leave the fight for conservative values and I will never stop fighting to elect principled Republican leaders to every office in the land, so help me God.”The crowd then broke into cheers, whistles and sustained applause, with Pence saying a quiet “thank you” after some minutes.His campaign for the presidency never caught fire. He was a loyal lieutenant to Trump throughout the New York Republican’s controversial single term despite Trump being twice impeached, for extorting Ukraine and for inciting the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.That ended, though, when Pence made the definitive move that caused an irreparable breach between him and Trump. The then vice-president refused to go along with exhortations from Trump that he decline, in his role as president of the US Senate, to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory over Trump.When Trump then condemned Pence for that via social media, as crowds of extremists were surging to the Capitol then broke in to try, in vain, to force a halt to Biden’s certification, many began chanting “Hang Mike Pence”.The vice-president, in the congressional chamber to certify the result on 6 January, had to flee for his safety along with other members of Congress as the mob invaded the building. Biden’s victory over Trump was certified by Congress in a battered Capitol in the early hours of 7 January, although many Republicans refused to endorse it.When Pence launched his campaign for the 2024 GOP nomination, however, in June, he chastised Trump for his “reckless” actions on 6 January.Pence touted his record in Congress and as Indiana governor, during which he supported legislation against abortion and expanded government spending, and repeated ideas from his campaign video released hours earlier including addressing inflation, the national debt and issues at the US-Mexico border.He also pointed to his time as vice-president, touting some of the policies that he and Trump pushed forth in their term.He first noted: “I was proud to stand by President Donald Trump every day”, then said: “The American people deserve to know that on that day [6 January 2021], President Trump also demanded that I choose between him and the constitution … And anyone who asked someone else to put them over the constitution should never be president of the United States again.”Pence is strongly anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+ equality, a fiscal conservative and a foreign policy hawk.“I’m a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order,” Pence said at his launch, repeating a frequently used phrase.Trump’s base of core supporters never forgave Pence for overseeing the certification of Biden’s election to the White House, viewing it as a supreme act of disloyalty to their icon.Pence stopped short of endorsing anyone in his speech on Saturday, but in an apparent swipe at Trump, called on Americans to select someone who appeals to “the better angels of our nature” and can lead with “civility”.Pence failed to attract enough anti-Trump Republican primary voters, and donors, to sustain a candidacy that has languished in the low single digits in opinion polls and struggled to raise money since he announced his White House bid in June.As a result Pence, a stolid campaigner short on charisma, was low on cash by October and despite spending time and resources in the first Republican nominating state of Iowa, had failed to catch fire there.When his campaign released Pence’s third-quarter fundraising totals on 15 October, his candidacy was $620,000 in debt and only had $1.2m cash on hand, far less than several better-performing Republican rivals and insufficient to sustain the financial demands of a White House race.In several past elections, former vice-presidents who have competed to become the White House nominee have succeeded, including Republican George HW Bush in 1988 and Democrat Al Gore in 2000.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Congressman Dean Phillips to launch Democratic primary bid against Biden

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      Dean Phillips, a Democratic congressman from Minnesota who is relatively unknown on the national US stage, is set to launch a long-shot campaign to primary Joe Biden in New Hampshire on Friday.The New Hampshire secretary of state’s office confirmed Phillips is scheduled to file paperwork to get on the ballot there on Friday morning.The Phillips campaign did not respond to a request for comment on his impending announcement.Phillips, who has represented western suburbs of Minneapolis since 2019 in Congress, has pointed to the US president’s age in discussing his potential primary run, saying the next generation of leaders should step up. Biden is 80 years old; Phillips is 54.The congressman is the heir of the Phillips Distilling Company and co-owned Talenti gelato. His run in 2018 for Minnesota’s third congressional district flipped the seat from Republican control. With a slogan of “everyone’s invited”, Phillips calls himself an “eternal optimist” and “bipartisan believer”.There’s little difference between Phillips and Biden on policy: Phillips has voted with Biden’s legislative agenda nearly 100% of the time, the White House pointed out.While Phillips has not officially announced his run, he has teased it for months. In recent days, a campaign bus was spotted en route to New Hampshire, and a campaign van was seen in the state. The vehicles carried a campaign website, dean24.com, which has been parked but not publicly set up yet.Earlier this month, Phillips stepped down from leadership roles in the caucus, saying: “It’s clear my convictions about 2024 are incongruent with the position of my colleagues and that was causing discomfort.”Phillips’s plan to primary an incumbent president has largely been met with confusion and derision, both from his colleagues and his constituents. He has also drawn a primary challenger in his district.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA spokesperson for the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party confirmed the state party will be supporting Biden in the primary and general elections in 2024.Separately, Biden is set to visit Minnesota next week. More

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      ‘People are sick and tired’: the man challenging far-right extremist Lauren Boebert

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      Adam Frisch is in his second congressional campaign, crossing and re-crossing Colorado’s third US House district, a space bigger than Pennsylvania. Thirteen months out from election day, time is one thing he does not lack. But Frisch has a unique way of counting it anyway: before and after Beetlejuice.“Before Beetlejuice,” the Democrat says, of polling in his Republican-leaning district, “we were up by two points, Trump was up five.”After Beetlejuice, the thinking goes, Frisch’s position may well improve further.Frisch, 56 and a former banker who now lives in Aspen, is the Democratic candidate to challenge Lauren Boebert next year. Boebert, a former restaurant owner and proud grandmother at 36, is the far-right Republican who won the seat in 2020 and has proven relentlessly controversial since – so much so that last year, even in a conservative district, she survived Frisch’s first challenge by the skin of her teeth.Boebert won after a recount, by just 546 votes, then went back to Washington DC to stoke the usual fires.But last month a bigger blaze flared up, when the congresswoman was shown to have behaved outrageously during a performance of the musical Beetlejuice in Denver.On security footage, Boebert sang and danced, took selfies, vaped and even appeared to grope her date as he fondled her in return. Both were ejected. For once, Boebert voiced something close to contrition. But to Frisch, the episode was just further proof that Boebert is there to be beaten.“We’re resonating with a lot of people,” he said, by phone, during another day of meeting and greeting.“In February of 22, when I first launched, there were two themes I started to work on. The Republicans laughed at me, the Democrats laughed at me, the media and the donor class laughed. But the themes are the people want the circus to stop, and they want someone to focus on the district.“And every day since then, [Boebert] has just been one of the national leaders of the circus. And obviously, it’s just gotten worse and worse … it’s just a mess and people are sick and tired.”Boebert is not the only member of Congress Frisch identifies as a purveyor of what the Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips – a high-school friend of Frisch – calls “angertainment”: lucrative playing of the partisan angles in Congress, on social media and on network TV.“When I looked at the data a couple of years ago,” Frisch says, “I saw that Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs are all kind of a part of that Republican chaos crowd, and I would put [Ilhan] Omar and [Rashida] Tlaib [leftwing Democrats from Minnesota and Michigan] on the other side.“They all have safe seats. A billion dollars against them is not going to change the outcome. But I noticed that in 2020, Boebert only won by five points … and so we realised that of all these ‘brand name’ representatives, Lauren Boebert is probably the only person that has any chance and a good chance now of losing.“I thought, ‘This could turn into a big deal.’ And obviously, it’s turned into a big deal.”Frisch has attracted national attention. But the same pre-Beetlejuice poll that put him up 50-48 also said 40% of district voters felt they did not “know” him.Therefore, while Boebert plays to the cameras in Washington – Frisch hits her for having a “mini television studio in her office, where there are supposed to be benches for constituents to sit before they actually have a chance to talk to the congresswoman” – her opponent continues to tour the battleground.“The issues that we face here are a lot more in common with rural Florida, rural Pennsylvania, than with Denver and Boulder and Colorado Springs,” he says. “And I’m just very focused on how small-town America and rural America and working-class America, especially like in Pueblo, which is a very blue-collar working-class town in the district, how that whole group has kind of been left behind. And I know it’s pretty easy to call it a rural-urban divide, but it’s there. I feel it.“I went in to this race eyes wide open. But the one true surprise was, regardless of political affiliation, regardless of political views, left, right or center, everyone in CD3 is frustrated with kind of the urban-centric conversation that is happening at the state level and a little bit at the national level … there is this resentment about how urban-centric the Democratic party has become.”Colorado district three tilts conservative but Frisch sees a “very libertarian” conservatism which he, an aspirant “Blue Dog” or “Problem Solvers” moderate in Congress, can work with.“It’s more of a ‘you be you’ party. They don’t want to really get involved with who you want to love, who you want to marry. They don’t want to get involved in who should be in a hospital room talking about reproductive rights, abortion. You know, ranchers and farmers are incredibly pragmatic. I’ve yet to meet a rancher or a farmer that’s un-pragmatic, because they won’t be in business for longer than eight days if they are.”Boebert has been called many things but pragmatic is rarely one. Frisch attributes her previous wins to opportunism and a libertarianism increasingly not enough for voters turned off by her antics. He also hopes his second attempt to eject Boebert from Congress will capture national attention not just for the drama it might provide.“I want to spend a lot more time trying to figure out how a lot more districts can have competitive races,” Frisch says, “because monopolies are bad in business and they’re bad in politics. I think 85% or 80% of the districts, they’re basically cooked in the primary. And to me, our primary system is ground zero for the dysfunctionality, the yelling and the screaming that’s going on around our country.” More