Today's recap
Donald Trump has won an overwhelming victory in the US’s first election contest of 2024, easily fending off a winnowed field of Republicans in the Iowa caucuses. The former president won 51% of the vote in Iowa, a 30-point lead over Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor. Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, trailed in third place with 19%.
Trump’s victory in the Iowa caucuses was heralded as an early beginning to the battle for the White House itself. Using an acronym for Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America great again”, Joe Biden told followers: “Here’s the thing: this election was always going to be you and me versus extreme Maga Republicans. It was true yesterday and it’ll be true tomorrow.”
Nikki Haley has said she will not appear on the debate stage without Donald Trump or Joe Biden. Ron DeSantis has confirmed he will be attending this week’s GOP presidential debates in New Hampshire. Trump has not participated in any of the Republican primary debates so far.
E Jean Carroll and Donald Trump faced each other in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday in her defamation trial against the ex-president. The trial started with jury selection. Before selection started, Trump’s lead lawyer on this case, Alina Habba, told the judge that his team intends to call him as a witness.
The former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, a stalwart conservative willing to sharply criticize Donald Trump, has suspended his beleaguered bid for the White House the day after he came in sixth place in Monday’s Iowa caucuses.
Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden by eight percentage points among registered voters in Georgia, according to a new poll. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll also showed nearly 20% of voters weren’t ready to support either candidate.
The Senate will vote on a resolution that would freeze military aid to Israel unless the Biden administration looks into potential human rights abuses in Gaza. The measure, forced to the floor by Senator Bernie Sanders, has little chance of passing given the overwhelming support for security assistance to Israel in Congress. The chamber is expected to debate and vote tonight.
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The US supreme court has decided it will not hear a case centering on the debate over bathrooms for transgender students. The decision came on Tuesday despite an appeal from Indiana’s metropolitan school district of Martinsville.
– Guardian staff
Updated
Speaking on the Senate floor earlier, Republican senator Lindsay Graham said that Hamas has “militarized” schools and hospitals by operating amongst them.
Israel has blamed Hamas for using hospitals for military purposes, but has not provided definitive proof backing its claims that Hamas kept a “command center” under Gaza’s main al-Shifa hospital, which the Israeli Defense Forces raided in November. Two-thirds of Gaza’s hospitals have been closed amidst what Joe Biden has characterized as “indiscriminate bombings”, during a time of acute need.
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Sanders himself has faced criticism for declining to endorse calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, as some of his progressive colleagues have done.
Amid anti-war protests across the US, progressive representatives including Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Barbara Lee and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have called for a ceasefire. In a letter to Biden, many of these lawmakers stressed that thousands of children had been killed in Israeli bombings.
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The measure that Bernie Sanders proposed uses a mechanism in the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which allows Congress to provide oversight of US military assistance, which must be used in accordance with international human rights agreements.
The Senate will be voting on whether to ask the US state department to create a report on whether Israel has violated human rights accords using US military aid and equipment during its campaign in Gaza. If the measure passes, the state department will have to provide a report within 30 days – and aid to Israel would be cut off if human rights violations are found.
Both Democrats and Republicans in congress oppose any conditions on aid to Israel, and Joe Biden has staunchly stood by Israel throughout its campaign against Gaza, so the proposal is very unlikely to be implemented. By forcing senators to vote on the record about whether they are willing to condition aid to Israel, however, Sanders and others lawmakers hope to spark debate on the matter.
Progressives and Democrats have increasingly pushed to place conditions on aid to Israel, which has drawn international criticism for its offensive in Gaza.
“While it is clear that Israel has the right to go to war against Hamas. It does not have the right to go to war against the Palestinian people and innocent men, women and children in Gaza,” Sanders said, speaking on Senate floor last week.
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Senate to debate of Sanders' measure on Israel military aid
Debate is about to begin on a measure that would condition military aid to Israel on whether the Israeli war effort in Gaza is violating human rights and international accords.
Introduced by Bernie Sanders, the measure is unlikely to win approval. But it is one of several measures that progressives have proposed to raise concerns over Israel’s attacks on Gaza, where the death toll surpassed than 24,000. Israel’s bombardment since October has also displaced most of Gaza’s 2.4m residents, and created a humanitarian crisis.
The Senate will soon vote on my resolution directing the State Department to report on any human rights violations that may have occurred using U.S. equipment in the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 16, 2024
It should not be controversial to ask how U.S. weapons are used. pic.twitter.com/egtZgBwO5Q
“To my mind, Israel has the absolute right to defend itself from Hamas’ barbaric terrorist attack on October 7, no question about that,” Sanders told AP in an interview.
“But what Israel does not have a right to do — using military assistance from the United States — does not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people,” said Sanders, the independent from Vermont. “And in my view, that’s what has been happening.”
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'Incredibly grotesque and offensive': White House slams Trump for referring to convicted January 6 rioters as 'hostages'
The White House has denounced Donald Trump’s description of jailed January 6 rioters as “hostages”, describing the former president’s comments as “incredibly grotesque and offensive”.
During a rally earlier this month, Trump called on Joe Biden to “release the J6 hostages”, referring to the people imprisoned for their role in the January 6 insurrection.
Trump’s comments were “grotesque and offensive”, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Tuesday.
It is offensive to compare those convicted of assaulting cops and attempting to overthrow the American government … to innocent Americans, Israelis and people of other nationalities who were abducted by Hamas on October 7.
Nikki Haley has downplayed Ron DeSantis’ trip down to South Carolina a day after his second-place finish in Iowa’s caucuses.
Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, was speaking to CNN from New Hampshire:
It really doesn’t matter to me why he went there. I’m sure he had a great time. South Carolina is a great state.
She noted that DeSantis now faced an uphill climb in both South Carolina and New Hampshire after focusing so heavily on Iowa, AP reported. She added:
He’s been invisible in both states. He is not my concern. I’m going after Trump.
Minutes after his second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses was confirmed, Ron DeSantis came onstage in a hotel ballroom to declare that everything was going according to plan in his campaign to win the Republican presidential nomination.
“They threw everything but the kitchen sink at us,” the Florida governor told a crowd of supporters who had made liberal use of a nearby cash bar on Monday evening, in the hours they waited for him to speak in West Des Moines. He said:
They were predicting that we wouldn’t be able to get our ticket punched here, out of Iowa. But, I can tell you because of your support, in spite of all of that they threw at us, everyone against us, we’ve got our ticket punched out of Iowa.
Ticket to where? The Florida governor did not say, and there are few indications he is primed to win, or even repeat his second-place finish, when New Hampshire Republicans hold their primary next week.
While DeSantis’s first runner-up status in Iowa is good enough for his campaign to continue, he finished 30 percentage points behind the victor, Donald Trump, and just two points ahead of Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor whose campaign is hoping for a win in New Hampshire.
DeSantis’s strategy called for victory in Iowa, and the governor campaigned in all 99 counties, won the endorsement of the state’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, and influential evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats and was supported by more than $33m in advertising.
None of that was enough to keep Trump from an overwhelming victory, and with the former president leading the polls of the other states that will vote in the coming weeks, it’s not clear where DeSantis can regain momentum.
Read the full analysis: DeSantis booked his ticket out of Iowa – but is he still on the road to nowhere?
Hundreds of people have gathered amid freezing temperatures outside a country club in Atkinson, New Hampshire, hours before Donald Trump is scheduled to speak.
The US supreme court has decided it will not hear a case centering on the debate over bathrooms for transgender students.
The decision came on Tuesday despite an appeal from Indiana’s metropolitan school district of Martinsville.
Martinsville school district officials hoped the nation’s highest court would not require allowing transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choosing. But the supreme court rejected the case without comment.
Federal appeals courts are divided over whether school policies enforcing restrictions on which bathrooms transgender students can use violate federal law or the US constitution.
In the 2023 case court brought by the Martinsville metropolitan school district, the Chicago-based US seventh circuit court of appeals ruled in favor of transgender boys, granting them access to the boys’ bathroom.
The seventh circuit’s opinion, written by judge Diane Wood, said that she expected the nation’s highest court to eventually be involved. Wood wrote:
Litigation over transgender rights is occurring all over the country, and we assume that at some point the supreme court will step in with more guidance than it has furnished so far.
The federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, also has ruled to allow transgender students to use the gendered bathroom with which they identify. But the US appellate court based in Atlanta ruled against granting that legal ability.
Court battles over transgender rights are ongoing across the country. And at least nine states are restricting transgender students to bathrooms that match the sex they were assigned at birth.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has responded to the announcement by Asa Hutchinson that he will suspend his bid for the White House.
DNC national press secretary Sarafina Chitika said:
This news comes as a shock to those of us who could’ve sworn he had already dropped out.
Nikki Haley’s latest comments come weeks after the Republican presidential candidate declined to specify that slavery was a case of the civil war.
Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, where the first shots of the north-south conflict were fired by Confederate soldiers in April 1861, was asked in late December about the reason for the war but didn’t mention slavery in her response.
Instead, she talked about the role of government, replying that it involved “basically how the government was going to run” and “the freedoms of what people could and couldn’t do”. Speaking at the town hall event in Berlin, New Hampshire, Haley added:
I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are. And we will always stand by the fact that I think the government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people.
The questioner said they were astonished she did not mention slavery. “In the year 2023, it’s astonishing to me that you answer that question without mentioning the word ‘slavery’,” the questioner responded, prompting a retort from Haley, who said:
What do you want me to say about slavery?
America has 'never been a racist country', says Haley
Nikki Haley has claimed that the US has “never been a racist country”, just weeks after she sparked backlash by failing to specify that slavery was a cause of the civil war.
The Republican presidential candidate was asked to respond to comments by MSNBC host Joy Reid, who claimed Haley’s third-place finish in Monday night’s Iowa caucuses was largely due to her race and ethnicity. Reid said:
The elephant in the room – she’s still a brown lady that’s got to try to win in a party that is deeply anti-immigrant ... I don’t see how she becomes the nominee of that party.
In an interview on “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday, Haley was asked to respond to Reid’s comments. Reid “lives in a different America than I do”, the former US ambassador to the UN said, adding:
I am a brown girl that grew up in South Carolina who became the first female minority governor in history, who became a UN ambassador and is now running for president. If that’s not the American dream, I don’t know what is.
Asked if she believes the GOP is a “racist party”, Haley replied:
No. We’re not a racist country. We’ve never been a racist country.
"We've never been a racist country."
— The Recount (@therecount) January 16, 2024
— Nikki Haley rejects Joy Reid's claim that Haley placed third in the Iowa caucuses because she is "a brown lady ... in a party that is deeply anti-immigrant," and rejects any claim that the GOP is a racist party pic.twitter.com/a3yRqK82em
Donald Trump’s legal team asked the judge in this second defamation civil trial brought by writer E Jean Carroll against him whether proceedings could be suspended this Thursday so that he can attend the funeral of his mother-in-law.
Judge Lewis Kaplan denied the request, in court today, a few days after he had refused to push the trial back by a week to accommodate Trump’s wish to go the funeral of Amalija Knavs, the mother of the former US president’s wife, Melania Trump.
Knavs died earlier this month.
“I am not stopping him from being there,” the judge said, referring to the funeral, the Associated Press reports.
Trump lawyer Alina Habba responded: “No, you’re stopping him from being here.”
Habba told the judge that Trump plans to testify. Kaplan said the only accommodation he would make is that Trump can testify on Monday, even if the trial is otherwise finished by Thursday.
Trump sat attentively, glaring and scowling at times, as about six-dozen prospective jurors filed into the courtroom and spent more than an hour responding to questions posed by the judge covering everything from their prior involvement with the judicial system to their political beliefs, AP further writes.
Trump fumes in court at trial over libel of E Jean Carroll
Donald Trump shook his head in disgust Tuesday as the judge in his New York defamation trial told prospective jurors that another jury had already decided the former president sexually abused columnist E Jean Carroll in the 1990s, the Associated Press reports.
Both Carroll and Trump are in court in New York today. Jury selection has just been completed, and opening arguments are expected this afternoon. The trial amounts to the penalty phase of a civil defamation lawsuit stemming from Carroll’s actions against Trump who was found liable by a previous jury of sexually attacking her in a department store dressing room many years ago.
The AP further reports:
Prospective jurors were told the trial was likely to last three to five days. Opening statements come next. Trump did not attend the previous trial in the case last May, when a jury found he had sexually abused Carroll and awarded her $5 million in damages. In light of that verdict, Judge Lewis Kaplan told prospective jurors the trial beginning Tuesday would focus only on how much money, if any, Trump must pay Carroll for comments he made about her while president in 2019.
For purposes of the new trial, it had already been determined that Trump “did sexually assault Ms. Carroll,” Kaplan said, prompting Trump to shake his head from side to side. The ex-president was sitting at the defense table, flanked by his lawyers, about a dozen feet from Carroll and her legal team. They didn’t appear to speak or make eye contact.
As the day began, Kaplan rejected the defense’s request to suspended the trial on Thursday so Trump could attend his mother-in-law’s funeral — part of a combative exchange in which Trump’s lawyers accused the judge of thwarting their defense with pretrial evidence rulings they contend were favorable to Carroll.
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Joe Biden has invited congressional leaders, key committee leaders and ranking members to the White House tomorrow to discuss the supplemental funding bill relating to funds to support Ukraine and Israel, relating to US national security issues, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.
The White House press briefing has just begun and Jean-Pierre confirmed the meeting, which was first reported by Punchbowl News earlier.
Reporters are asking now if a deal might be closer on a spending agreement.
Legislation has been stalled since early December after Senate Republicans blocked a funding bill that included aid for Ukraine and Israel.
That vote came one day after Senate Democrats formally unveiled the $111bn supplemental security bill, reflecting the funding request that Joe Biden issued in October to provide assistance to the US’s allies abroad, the Guardian reported at the time.
The White House media briefing is due to begin shortly, with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, accompanied by national security spokesman John Kirby. Kirby tends to focus on international security issues involving the Biden administration.
It’s an audio only briefing today.
Joe Biden is at the White House. The US president spoke with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz earlier, with the White House saying the two discussed Ukraine and the ongoing events in the Middle East. More details are expected later.
Updated
Summary of the day so far
Donald Trump has won an overwhelming victory in the US’s first election contest of 2024, easily fending off a winnowed field of Republicans in the Iowa caucuses. The former president won 51% of the vote in Iowa, a 30-point lead over Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor. Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, trailed in third place with 19%.
Trump’s victory in the Iowa caucuses was heralded as an early beginning to the battle for the White House itself. Using an acronym for Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America great again”, Joe Biden told followers: “Here’s the thing: this election was always going to be you and me versus extreme Maga Republicans. It was true yesterday and it’ll be true tomorrow.”
Nikki Haley has said she will not appear on the debate stage without Donald Trump or Joe Biden. Ron DeSantis has confirmed he will be attending this week’s GOP presidential debates in New Hampshire. Trump has not participated in any of the Republican primary debates so far.
E Jean Carroll and Donald Trump faced each other in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday in her defamation trial against the ex-president. The trial started with jury selection. Before selection started, Trump’s lead lawyer on this case, Alina Habba, told the judge that his team intends to call him as a witness.
The former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, a stalwart conservative willing to sharply criticize Donald Trump, has suspended his beleaguered bid for the White House the day after he came in sixth place in Monday’s Iowa caucuses.
Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden by eight percentage points among registered voters in Georgia, according to a new poll. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll also showed nearly 20% of voters weren’t ready to support either candidate.
The Senate will vote on a resolution that would freeze military aid to Israel unless the Biden administration looks into potential human rights abuses in Gaza. The measure, forced to the floor by Senator Bernie Sanders, has little chance of passing given the overwhelming support for security assistance to Israel in Congress.
Trump dominated Iowa’s most religious counties - analysis
Donald Trump’s weakest performance in the Iowa caucuses was in the parts of the Hawkeye State that more closely resemble the rest of the US, according to an analysis of last night’s results.
The former president dominated in Iowa’s most religious regions, winning 58% of the vote in the most religious counties compared with 54% in the least religious, the Washington Post reported.
Trump’s best gains in evangelical areas may be less predictive of success around the country than the results in Iowa’s bigger metropolitan areas, the report said.
Education also proved to be a particularly strong decider last night. Trump performed well with the state’s lower-income and less educated counties, while his worst results were Ames and Johnson County, home to Iowa State University and the University of Iowa.
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Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden by eight percentage points among registered voters in Georgia, according to a new poll.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll released Tuesday morning shows 45% of Georgia voters would support Trump, compared to 37% who would support Biden in a hypothetical rematch. The poll also showed nearly 20% of voters weren’t ready to support either candidate.
Biden is hurt by soft support among many Democratic and independent voters who were key to his 2020 victory over Trump in Georgia, including 10% of Black voters who said they do not plan to vote at all, the poll showed.
The US supreme court will be reviewing an appeals court ruling that officials in cities across the west say bar them from removing unhoused people from public spaces when there are no shelter beds available.
On Friday, the supreme court agreed to hear an appeal from the city of Grants Pass, in south-west Oregon, where in 2022 a three-judge ninth circuit of appeals panel ruled that the city could not enforce its anti-camping ordinance that barred people from using any sort of shelter or bedding equipment on public property.
This ruling was partially based on the 2018 decision in Martin v Boise, a case that ended with the ninth circuit of appeals deciding that pushing people from city sidewalks and clearing encampments without offering shelter violates the US constitution’s cruel and unusual punishment clause.
Police, officials and business owners have contested the decision, arguing that it ties the hands of municipalities that want to clear homeless encampments. Advocates for the unhoused, on the other hand, argue that this decision does not stop local governments from building and investing in support services and shelters, but it does stop people from being punished for sleeping outdoors when they have no other option.
The National Homelessness Law Center said in a statement after the supreme court announcement:
Homelessness is growing not because cities lack ways to punish people for being poor, but because a growing number of hard-working Americans are struggling to pay rent and make ends meet.
“This case does not limit communities’ response to addressing homelessness. Cities remain free to use any of the many evidence-based approaches that end homelessness, like housing,” the statement continued.
Bernie Sanders to force Senate vote on potentially freezing military aid to Israel
The Senate will vote on a resolution that would freeze military aid to Israel unless the Biden administration looks into potential human rights abuses in Gaza.
If passed, the resolution would require the State Department to produce a report within 30 days examining any human rights violations committed during Israel’s blockade and invasion of Gaza in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks on 7 October.
The resolution has little chance of passing given the overwhelming support for security assistance to Israel in Congress.
The measure was forced to the floor by Senator Bernie Sanders, who last week spoke on the Senate floor:
In essence, we will be voting on a very simple question: Do you support asking the State Department whether human rights violations may have occurred using U.S. equipment or assistance in this war?
The Senate will soon vote on my resolution directing the State Department to report on any human rights violations that may have occurred using U.S. equipment in the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 16, 2024
It should not be controversial to ask how U.S. weapons are used. pic.twitter.com/egtZgBwO5Q
Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, told the New York Times:
There is growing concern among the American people and in Congress that what Israel is doing now is not a war against Hamas, but a war against the Palestinian people. That with American military aid, children are starving to death, is to me — I mean, I just don’t know what adjectives I can use. It’s disgraceful. And I think I’m not the only one who feels that.
Updated
Eric Trump has said he is confident that his father will wrap up the Republican nomination “fairly quickly”.
Donald Trump’s son, in an interview with the BBC, said the world was in a “very, very, very dangerous spot” and that “people want peace and prosperity and strength back”.
Asked how quickly he felt his father could wrap up the Republican nomination, he replied:
It’s going to come fairly quickly because I’m certain it will be done by Super Tuesday.
Donald Trump and Nikki Haley have until 5pm ET today to decide whether to participate in the upcoming GOP primary debate in New Hampshire.
The debate is scheduled to take place on Thursday, hosted by ABC News and New Hampshire TV station WMUR. An ABC News spokesperson said in a statement:
ABC News and WMUR-TV have officially given Donald Trump and Nikki Haley’s campaigns a deadline of 5:00 p.m. EST today to commit to the Republican presidential primary debate planned for Thursday, Jan. 18 at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. We will update our plans accordingly.
Trump has not participated in any of the Republican primary debates so far, and Haley announced earlier today that she will not debate without Trump or Joe Biden.
Even before launching his bid, Asa Hutchinson stood apart from most Republicans by calling on Donald Trump to drop out “for the sake of the office of the presidency” instead of seeking another White House term.
Hutchinson kept up his sharp criticism of Trump, drawing boos from the crowd at a conservative conference in Florida when he said there was a “significant likelihood that Donald Trump will be found guilty by a jury on a felony offense next year”.
Over the jeering, Hutchinson warned that continuing to support Trump would hurt Republicans in 2024 and “weaken the GOP for decades to come”.
“While some will ignore the destructive behavior of the former president, I assure you we ignore it at our own peril,” he said. His campaign highlighted the speech on his social media accounts, asking Republicans who shared his fears to donate.
It was not enough to sustain his candidacy, particularly as his rivals began sharpening their attacks on Trump after an initial hesitancy to do so. In late October, his campaign manager left, but Hutchinson vowed to stay in the race.
As the primary season neared, Hutchinson, along with other stalled candidates like the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, faced pressure from anti-Trump strategists and donors to drop out and coalesce behind a viable alternative. But he had, until now, resisted, arguing that there was still time for candidates like himself to break out and dent Trump’s lead.
The former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson announced his bid for the White House shortly after Joe Biden launched his re-election campaign, arguing that both Joe Biden and Donald Trump were focused on the past rather than the future.
A long shot from the start, Hutchinson launched his campaign in the spring with a pledge to “bring out the best of America”.
On the campaign trail, he often highlighted his long career in public service to draw a contrast with Trump. A former congressman from Arkansas and a US attorney, he served as the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration and as the undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security under president George Bush.
As governor, he amassed a conservative record on taxes, guns and abortion. During his term, he signed into law a “trigger” ban on abortions at every stage of pregnancy, which took effect when the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022. It includes no exceptions for pregnancies that result from rape or incest. Hutchinson now says he regrets that the law does not allow for those exemptions.
Hutchinson left office in 2023. Succeeding him as governor is Trump’s former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Asa Hutchinson, who has just announced he is dropping out of the Republican presidential race, finished sixth in last night’s Iowa caucuses.
The former Arkansas governor, who launched his long-shot bid for the 2024 Republican nomination in April, was the last candidate remaining in the GOP race who was willing to criticize Donald Trump.
He failed to register beyond a single percentage point in most polls and did not qualify for the party’s second debate in September.
Hutchinson joins Vivek Ramaswamy, Chris Christie, Mike Pence, Tim Scott, Doug Burgum, Larry Elder, Perry Johnson, Will Hurd and Francis Suarez in suspending his bid for the GOP nomination.
Hutchinson’s campaign manager, Alison Williams, said he wasn’t issuing an endorsement at this time, AP reported.
Asa Hutchinson suspends presidential campaign
Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson has announced that he is suspending his presidential primary campaign.
A statement reads:
I congratulate Donald J. Trump for his win last night in Iowa and to the other candidates who competed and garnered delegate support. Today, I am suspending my campaign for President and driving back to Arkansas. My message of being a principled Republican with experience and telling the truth about the current front runner did not sell in Iowa. I stand by the campaign I ran. I answered every question, sounded the warning to the GOP about the risks in 2024 and presented hope for our country’s future. Susan and I are blessed beyond measure, and we are grateful for the opportunity to have fought in the political arena for America.
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Senior lawmakers in Congress have announced a bipartisan deal to expand the child tax credit and provide a series of tax breaks for businesses.
The deal would enhance refundable child tax credits in an attempt to provide relief to families that are struggling financially and those with multiple children. It would also adjust the tax credit for inflation starting in 2024.
Senate Finance committee chair Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, and House Ways and Means committee chair Jason Smith, a Missouri Republican, unveiled the agreement as a “common sense, bipartisan, bicameral tax framework that promotes the financial security of working families, boosts growth and American competitiveness, and strengthens communities and Main Street businesses.”
In a statement, Smith said:
American families will benefit from this bipartisan agreement that provides greater tax relief, strengthens Main Street businesses, boosts our competitiveness with China, and creates jobs.
Wyden said in a statement:
Fifteen million kids from low-income families will be better off as a result of this plan, and given today’s miserable political climate, it’s a big deal to have this opportunity to pass pro-family policy that helps so many kids get ahead.
Wyden has said he hopes to pass the deal by the beginning of tax filing season on 29 Jan but the deal, which was not negotiated by the leadership, still faces many hurdles amid a looming government shutdown.
Kamala Harris: we've beaten Trump before and we'll beat him again
Kamala Harris has said she is confident she and Joe Biden will win reelection in November regardless of who their Republican opponent will be.
“No matter who the Republican nominee is, we’re winning,” Harris said in an interview with ABC News filmed before the Iowa caucuses last night. She added:
If it is Donald Trump, we’ve beat him before and we’ll beat him again.
In an @ABC News exclusive interview, Vice Pres. Kamala Harris said, “No matter who the Republican nominee is, we’re winning.” @MaryKBruce has more on her interview with the vice president and her keynote address in South Carolina. https://t.co/3KfIyhZxWE pic.twitter.com/fXtvBsRwNG
— World News Tonight (@ABCWorldNews) January 16, 2024
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Donald Trump’s resounding win on Monday night has been portrayed as a triumph for the former US president and bad news for those who hoped his attempt to return to the Oval Office would show signs of floundering at the first jump.
Iowa’s Republican caucuses are hardly representative of the nation as a whole but as the first state to actually cast votes in the 2024 nomination contest, its results were eagerly anticipated across the political spectrum. As they trickled in one message was clear: among Republicans Trump’s message is still powerful.
Top Democrats, however, did not immediately react to the results with the same level of dismay that might be expected from the dramatic return of their nemesis. Instead it was heralded as an early beginning to the national battle for the White House.
Much reporting suggests Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign team wants to face Trump over other challengers. Doing so would allow them to campaign more on the threat Trump poses than the virtues of Biden himself – a historically unpopular president at this point in his term, blamed for his age, the fact that gas prices were once high, and perhaps more pressingly his support of Israel in its offensive in Gaza following the Hamas attacks in October.
Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis both often poll better in a hypothetical matchup with Biden than Trump does. And while various polls show Trump currently edges Biden in several swing states, Biden actually beat Trump once already in 2020. The unstated core of Biden’s campaign is a message that he can do so again.
In that light, the earlier Trump sews up his apparently inevitable nomination, the more time Democrats have to persuade the US electorate that voting for Biden is the lesser of two evils.
Ron DeSantis has confirmed he will be attending this week’s GOP presidential debates in New Hampshire, after Nikki Haley said she would only step foot on the debate stage again if Donald Trump or Joe Biden is there.
Posting to social media, DeSantis said Haley “is afraid to debate because she doesn’t want to answer the tough questions” and said she is running to be Trump’s vice president. He added:
I won’t snub New Hampshire voters like both Nikki Haley and Donald Trump, and plan to honor my commitments. I look forward to debating two empty podiums in the Granite State this week.
Nikki Haley is afraid to debate because she doesn’t want to answer the tough questions such as how she got rich off Boeing after giving them millions in taxpayer handouts as governor of South Carolina.
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) January 16, 2024
The reality is that she is not running for the nomination, she’s running to…
About seven in 10 Iowans who caucused for Donald Trump on Monday night said they knew all along that that they would support the former president, according to a poll.
The findings by the Associated Press’s VoteCast poll suggest that last night’s GOP caucuses were practically over before they even began, and show that Trump has cultivated a deep network of support over three presidential runs.
Trump performed strongly in small town and rural communities, where about 60% of caucus goers in Iowa said they live, AP reported. Trump was also backed by white evangelical Christians, who make up nearly half of the caucus goers, and among those without a college degree.
GOP voters in the state cited immigration and the economy as their priorities; roughly four in 10 identified immigration as the most important issue for the nation, and about six in 10 put their support behind Trump.
About 90% of Iowa’s Republican caucus goers said they supported building a wall along the US-Mexico border, with about seven in 10 expressing strong support for the idea first championed by Trump during his 2016 campaign.
The vast majority of caucus goers, about three-quarters, said immigrants hurt the US, the poll said.
E Jean Carroll has also arrived at Manhattan federal court where jury selection is about to start in the New York writer’s defamation trial against Donald Trump.
The trial is Trump’s second such proceeding in less than a year – a previous trial jury in another, related lawsuit by the Carroll determined that the former US president sexually abused her.
Carroll said that Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room nearly 30 years ago. She first publicly came forward five years ago with an excerpt from her then forthcoming book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, in New York magazine.
Tuesday’s trial will not relitigate Carroll’s claim of sexual assault. On 9 January, Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that Trump cannot deny the sexual assault, pointing to a jury’s previous finding. Jurors are tasked with deciding only if Trump defamed her with his 2019 statements and, if so, the financial penalties associated with said denial.
Read the full story here: Trump returns to court for new E Jean Carroll trial – and it could prove costly
Trump arrives at Manhattan courthouse for E Jean Carroll defamation trial
Donald Trump’s motorcade has arrived at Manhattan federal court where he will voluntarily attend jury selection in E Jean Carroll’s defamation trial against the former president.
The proceedings are scheduled to begin shortly. Jury selection is expected to take a few hours in the morning, followed by opening statements.
Haley says she will only debate Trump or Biden
Nikki Haley has said the next debate she will participate in will either be with Donald Trump or Joe Biden, suggesting that she will not be attending the two upcoming GOP primary debates in New Hampshire.
“We’ve had five great debates in this campaign. Unfortunately, Donald Trump has ducked all of them. He has nowhere left to hide,” Haley posted to social media this morning.
The next debate I do will either be with Donald Trump or with Joe Biden. I look forward to it.
We’ve had five great debates in this campaign. Unfortunately, Donald Trump has ducked all of them. He has nowhere left to hide. The next debate I do will either be with Donald Trump or with Joe Biden. I look forward to it.
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) January 16, 2024
The two Republican New Hampshire debates are scheduled for Thursday in Manchester, and Saturday in Henniker. The Granite State’s first-in-the-nation primary will take place next Tuesday.
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What's next? Key elections 2024 events to watch
The 2024 election season has officially begun in a year that will see US voters choose the next president and determine which party holds the House and Senate.
In a uniquely American fashion, there are ever-changing rules and party maneuvers in both how people vote, and when. Here’s the schedule of key events to watch.
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Dean Phillips, the Minnesota congressman mounting a long-shot challenge to Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination, praised the Trump White House for its outreach on issues and legislation he worked on and said he had “not seen any of that reach-out by the Biden White House”.
“I don’t believe that we’ve had a president recently that invested in the way one needs to develop … those relationships and that work ethic,” Phillips told Johanna Maska, host of the Press Advance podcast and a former aide to Barack Obama.
And I’ll be forthright: the Trump White House worked very closely with me in my office on two really important initiatives.
Phillips’ criticism may touch a nerve in the White House but it will not be a surprise. The 54-year-old has insisted on the campaign trail that Biden is both too old and the wrong man to take on Donald Trump should Trump win the Republican nomination. His effort to primary Biden has also irritated the White House, which has been staunch in its criticism of him.
Donald Trump will continue on to the New Hampshire primaries more confident than ever about capturing the Republican nomination after the former president secured a 30-point win in the Iowa caucuses on Monday.
As he delivered his victory speech in Des Moines on Monday night, Trump complimented his opponents as “very smart people, very capable people,” and he appeared to already be turning his attention to a potential general election rematch against Joe Biden. Trump told the crowd:
We’re going to come together. It’s going to happen soon.
Trump’s history-making victory in Iowa intensified skepticism that any of his opponents will be able to overtake him in the Republican primary. Despite the 91 felony counts against him, Trump has maintained a consistent and significant lead in the 2024 US race, and the Iowa results underscored his enduring popularity with the Republican base.
Even so, Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, voiced optimism as he addressed supporters on Monday night, dismissing any possibility of withdrawing from the race. DeSantis said:
Because of your support, in spite of all of that they threw at us, everyone against us, we’ve got our ticket punched out of Iowa.
Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, also remained undaunted after Trump’s runaway victory. Even though she failed to capture second place, Haley boldly declared that the primary was now “a two-person race” between her and Trump, given her momentum in the next voting state of New Hampshire. According to the FiveThirtyEight average of New Hampshire polls, Haley is now roughly 11 points behind Trump, having cut his lead in half over the past month.
“Tonight, I will be back in the great state of New Hampshire,” Haley told supporters in West Des Moines on Monday.
And the question before Americans is now very clear: do you want more of the same, or do you want a new generation of conservative leadership?
The results of the Iowa caucuses indicate Republicans may be quite happy with more of the same.
Summary of the day so far...
Donald Trump won 51% of the vote in Iowa, giving him the largest margin of victory in the history of the state’s Republican caucuses. Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, secured a distant second-place finish with 21% of the vote, while Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, trailed in third place with 19%.
Even though she failed to capture second place, Haley boldly declared that the primary was now “a two-person race” between her and Trump. She later put out a new campaign advert attacking Trump and Biden, saying she is the “better choice” for America. She reportedly has already made her way to New Hampshire, which will hold the first-in-the-nation primary on 23 January.
Jury selection is set to start Tuesday morning in E Jean Carroll’s Manhattan federal court defamation trial against Trump.
Belgium’s prime minister, Alexander De Croo, whose country holds the EU’s presidency, has urged Europe to become more self-reliant, given the possible return of Donald Trump to the White House. “If 2024 brings us ‘America First’ again, it will be more than ever Europe on its own,” De Croo was quoted by AFP as telling the European parliament. “We should not fear that prospect. We should embrace it, by putting Europe on a more solid footing – stronger, more sovereign, more self-reliant.”
Haley says she’s ‘better choice' for America in new ad attacking Biden and Trump
Nikki Haley has said in a new campaign advert attacking Donald Trump and Joe Biden that she is the “better choice” for America, as the former South Carolina governor tries to regain momentum after narrowly losing to Ron DeSantis in the Iowa caucuses.
Haley puts herself forward as the better choice than Biden and Trump, whom the narrator in the ad suggests “are the two most-disliked politicians in America”.
“Both are consumed by chaos, negativity and grievances of the past – the better choice for a better America: Nikki Haley,” the ad says.
I have a different style and approach from Joe Biden and Donald Trump. No drama. No vendettas. No whining. Just results. pic.twitter.com/llqGBFhi4c
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) January 16, 2024
“I have a different style and approach. I’ll fix our economy, close our border, and strengthen the cause of freedom,” Haley says.
“We need a new generation of Conservative leadership to get it done.”
The ad comes quickly on the heels of DeSantis’s second place finish in Iowa, with 21.2% of the vote, blunting the charge of Haley, who secured 19.1%.
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Ryan Blinkley, the Texas businessman and pastor, was quoted as saying on Monday night: “I’m still standing,” after coming in fifth place in the Iowa caucuses. He reportedly said he would go on to the primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina.
“We’re still running and fighting for our country,” Blinkley, who earned 0.7% of the vote, told a small crowd of about 30 supporters in Des Moines, according to the Des Moines Register.
Behind Blinkley was the former Arkansas governor, Asa Hutchinson, who got about 0.2% of the vote in Iowa.
You can see the Republican results in full here:
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You can listen to the latest episode of the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America podcast, which dissects the Iowa results and discusses what Trump’s landslide win means for the rest of the Republican race (and beyond), here:
Nikki Haley moves on to New Hampshire in bid to regain momentum
Nikki Haley has reportedly already made her way to New Hampshire, where she, Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump will all host events in different locations, BBC News reports.
Even though she failed to capture second place in Iowa, Haley boldly declared that the primary was now “a two-person race” between her and Trump, given her momentum in the next voting state of New Hampshire.
According to the FiveThirtyEight average of New Hampshire polls, Haley, the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, is now roughly 11 points behind Trump, having cut his lead in half over the past month.
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Most Republicans at Iowa’s caucus said they felt Donald Trump would be fit for the White House even if he were convicted of a crime, an entrance poll has revealed.
About two-thirds of caucus-goers also said they did not believe Democratic president Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election (there is no evidence of widespread fraud in that election, in which Biden won both the electoral college and popular vote), according to the poll.
Trump has been charged with 91 felony counts across four criminal cases.
Here are the updated highlights, reported by Reuters, from the Edison Research poll based on interviews with 1,628 Iowa Republicans:
66% said they did not think Biden legitimately won the presidency in 2020.
65% said they decided who to support in the presidential nomination contest before this month.
65% said Trump would still be fit to be president if he were convicted of a crime. 31% said he would be unfit if convicted.
61% said they favor a federal law that would ban abortions nationwide.
53% of white caucus-goers who considered themselves evangelical or born-again Christians supported Trump, while 27% backed DeSantis.
46% of voters said they considered themselves part of the Maga movement, a reference to Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan. 50% said they were not part of that movement.
Trump led Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis by double digits among men and women alike. But among college graduates Trump was preferred by about 37% of caucus-goers, compared to 28% for Haley and 26% for DeSantis.
38% percent of caucus-goers said the economy was the issue that mattered most in deciding who to vote for on Monday, compared to 34% who cited immigration, while the rest cited foreign policy or abortion.
14% said the most important quality a Republican presidential nominee should have is the ability to beat Biden, compared to 41% who said shared values mattered most.
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The US vice-president, Kamala Harris, has shared this tweet urging people to donate to the Biden-Harris campaign after news of the Trump Iowa landslide.
Trump just won the Iowa caucus. The same person who recently called the overturning of Roe v. Wade a “miracle” is one step closer to becoming the Republican nominee for president.
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) January 16, 2024
The choice is clear.
Chip in now to help @JoeBiden and me defeat Trump: https://t.co/8ff1BeEKWn
Harris warned Americans that their freedom was under threat as she commemorated Martin Luther King Jr. Day in early-voting South Carolina on Monday.
She said that freedom in the country is under “profound threat,” citing the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade, long lines for voting and the prevalence of gun violence.
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.
Europe should not fear standing alone if US adopts ‘America First’ policy in 2024, says Belgian prime minister
Belgium’s prime minister, Alexander De Croo, whose country holds the EU’s presidency, has urged Europe to become more self-reliant, given the possible return of Donald Trump to the White House.
“If 2024 brings us ‘America First’ again, it will be more than ever Europe on its own,” De Croo was quoted by AFP as telling the European parliament.
“We should not fear that prospect. We should embrace it, by putting Europe on a more solid footing – stronger, more sovereign, more self-reliant.”
There are concerns in some European countries that if Trump was elected as president he could cut support for Ukraine or undermine the US’s leading role in Nato, which underpins European security.
Jury selection to begin in E Jean Carroll defamation trial against Trump
Jury selection is set to start Tuesday morning in E Jean Carroll’s Manhattan federal court defamation trial against Donald Trump.
A previous trial jury in another, related lawsuit by the New York writer determined that the former US president sexually abused her.
Carroll said that Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room nearly 30 years ago. She first publicly came forward five years ago with an excerpt from her then forthcoming book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, in New York magazine.
Trump, at the time still president, immediately went on the attack, claiming: “I’ve never met this person in my life. She is trying to sell a new book – that should indicate her motivation. It should be sold in the fiction section.” She filed suit against him in 2019, saying Trump’s denials harmed her reputation.
At that time, Carroll couldn’t pursue legal action against Trump for the claimed sexual assault, as it had fallen outside New York’s civil statute of limitations. The advent of New York state’s Adult Survivors Act in 2022 – which provided a one-year window allowing adult survivors of sexual misconduct to sue their accused abusers – enabled her to sue Trump again, for the underlying assault claim.
That lawsuit also included defamation claims for Trump’s comments about her after he left the White House. This second lawsuit went on trial in April 2023 and jurors awarded her $5m, finding Trump liable of sexual abuse and defamation for the post-presidency comments.
This week’s trial will only weigh whether Trump’s denials while he was president constituted defamation which, in practical terms, means it will effectively boil down to damages. The judge overseeing this case, Lewis Kaplan, will not allow Trump’s team to re-litigate Carroll’s claims.
You can read the full story from my colleague, Victoria Bekiempis, here:
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The Associated Press has so far allocated 16 of Iowa’s 40 delegates to Donald Trump and four delegates each to Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis.
These two dozen delegates represent 60% of the state’s total. Delegates will cast their votes at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this summer.
The way delegates are awarded differs by state, and in Iowa, the delegates are awarded proportionally based on the statewide vote. There are no minimum thresholds candidates need to reach in order to win delegates in Iowa.
To find out more about the mechanics of the Iowa caucuses and the influence they will have on the 2024 US election, you can read this useful explainer by my colleague, Martin Pengelly, here:
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Biden says Trump is clear Republican 'frontrunner' after his landslide victory in Iowa
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Donald Trump has won a landslide victory in the Iowa caucuses, prompting the current president, Joe Biden, to acknowledge his status as the clear Republican frontrunner in the race to face the Democratic nominee (likely Biden) in the November presidential election.
With an estimated 99% of the vote counted, Trump was at 51%, the two-term Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, at 21.2% and the former South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, at 19.1%, according to Edison Research.
The previous largest margin of victory for a contested Iowa Republican caucus was 12.8 percentage points for Bob Dole in 1988.
DeSantis and Haley vowed to press ahead after the results, ensuring Trump’s opposition will remain fractured as the campaign moves to New Hampshire, a more moderate state, which will hold the first-in-the-nation primary on 23 January.
Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy came in fourth place in the Iowa caucuses, before dropping out of the race on Monday night and endorsing the former president, who has a small lead over Haley in New Hampshire, according to polls.
Looks like Donald Trump just won Iowa. He’s the clear front runner on the other side at this point.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 16, 2024
But here’s the thing: this election was always going to be you and me vs. extreme MAGA Republicans. It was true yesterday and it’ll be true tomorrow.
So if you’re with us, chip…
After Trump’s emphatic win in Iowa, Biden wrote on X: “Looks like Donald Trump just won Iowa. He’s the clear frontrunner on the other side at this point.”
In a call to action, Biden, whose campaign has faced growing calls to become more active and aggressive in highlighting the contrast with Trump, said “if you’re with us, chip in now”.
