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But another Republican woman might be in the running.
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Tag: 2024 election
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Top Maine Election Official to Appeal Ruling on Trump Ballot Decision
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Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows announced Friday that she will be appealing a lower court ruling that placed on hold her decision to keep former President Donald Trump off the state’s GOP primary ballot.
In late December, Bellows, who is her state’s top election official, ruled that the 14th Amendment’s “insurrection clause” bars Trump from seeking re-election, citing his central role in fomenting the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Supreme Court recently agreed to review a similar ruling in Colorado, and is slated to hear oral arguments on the question on February 8.
“Like many Americans, I welcome a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court in the Colorado case that provides guidance as to the important Fourteenth Amendment questions in this case,” Bellows said in a statement. “This appeal ensures that Maine’s highest court has the opportunity to weigh in now, before ballots are counted, promoting trust in our free, safe and secure elections.”
Bellows’ announcement comes after a state Superior Court judge on Wednesday ruled that Bellows’ decision would be put on hold until the Supreme Court rules on the issue, arguing that “many of the issues presented in this case are likely to be resolved, narrowed, or rendered moot by the Supreme Court’s decision.” Without ruling on the merits of Bellows’ decision, Superior Court Justice Michaela Murphy ruled that the Secretary of State would have to issue a new ruling after the country’s highest court comes down on the issue.
In her statement, Bellows argued that “Maine law provides the opportunity to seek review from the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.” But in a ruling released late Friday, Valerie Stanfill, the court’s chief justice, wrote that the Superior Court’s order was “generally not appealable,” and gave Bellows a deadline of Tuesday to explain why the court shouldn’t dismiss her appeal.
Maine is just one of at least 35 states legally challenging Trump’s eligibility on primary ballots; lawsuits are still ongoing in many states. The former president’s legal team released its opening brief in the Supreme Court case on Thursday, arguing that the legal challenges “promise to unleash chaos and bedlam if other state courts and state officials follow Colorado’s lead and exclude the likely Republican presidential nominee from their ballots.” Trump called on the court to “put a swift and decisive end” to the challenges.
With Maine and Colorado GOP voters set to go to the polls on March 5, when 15 states will hold “Super Tuesday” nominating contests, the timeline on these cases is tight. It’s unclear whether the Supreme Court will even be able to rule on the issue by that primary date. Nicholas Jacobs, an assistant professor of government at Maine’s Colby College, told The New York Times Friday that “the only thing we can be sure of is that, come Super Tuesday, Mainers are going to be even more confused about whether their vote counts.”
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Jack McCordick
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Trump's 2024 Strength Is A Mirage
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Trump’s Iowa caucus numbers were not a triumph but evidence of a weak candidate winning an unenthused election.
Susan Glasser put Trump’s Iowa numbers into context in The New Yorker, “By the time all the breathless cable-news coverage was over and the media horde of a thousand journalists had moved on, Trump had received support from a mere fifty-six thousand caucus-goers, amounting to some seven percent of the registered Republicans in the state and just three percent of over-all registered voters in Iowa. More people voted for Muriel Bowser in Washington, D.C., ‘s last mayoral primary. All told Iowa represents less than one percent of the nation’s population—and next week’s New Hampshire primary comes in a state that is even smaller.”
The reason why Trump was determined to keep small non-diverse states like Iowa and New Hampshire at the beginning of the primary calendar. The former president knew that those two states matched up perfectly with his electorate and they would get outsized media coverage, so if Trump won them by a large margin, the narrative that he is dominant writes itself.
Since few members of the political press who work in legacy media look deeper into the numbers. they see a big margin of victory and run with it as the story.
There is nothing so far in Iowa or the 2024 polling data, as dubious as it is, that suggests Donald Trump is a strong candidate.
The same red flags that have been around Trump for years are even stronger in 2024.
Donald Trump appears to be a weak candidate whose appeal is limited to non-existent outside of his current base of support.
Trump’s path to victory involves his devoted base turning out to vote while hoping that the rest of the country tunes out and stays home in larger numbers.
It happened in 2016, and Trump is hoping to make it happen again in 2024.
The idea that Donald Trump is a strong candidate is a myth created by the Trump campaign. Trump is very beatable, and the numbers in Iowa show his weakness, not his strength as a candidate.
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Jason Easley
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“Not Tough Enough” and “Not Smart Enough”: Trump Rules Out Nikki Haley As VP
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Former President Donald Trump definitively ruled out Nikki Haley as a possible running mate as he ramped up attacks against the former South Carolina Governor before Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.
“She is not presidential timber,” Trump said about Haley during a Friday campaign event in Concord, New Hampshire. “Now, when I say that, that probably means that she’s not going to be chosen as the vice president.”
“I know her very well. She’s not tough enough. She’s not smart enough. And she wasn’t respected enough. She cannot do this job,” added Trump, who once called Haley a “fantastic person” and “very special” when she resigned from the UN ambassadorship in 2018, a position to which Trump had appointed her. “She’s not going to be able to deal with President Xi. She’s not going to be able to deal with Putin.”
Haley, who has long maintained that she’s not running for second place, told a New Hampshire voter Friday that the Vice Presidency was “off the table,” according to a recording of the exchange obtained by Politico. “I have always said that. That is a game they play that I’m not going to play,” she said. “I don’t want to be vice president.”
Trump’s comments come as Haley has risen in the polls over the past month, especially in the Granite State, which has a high share of independent-leaning voters. The latest Suffolk University/NBC10 Boston/Boston Globe poll released Saturday morning had Trump leading Haley by 17 points, with Haley garnering 36 percent of likely GOP primary voters.
As he hopes a big win on Tuesday will secure his hold on the nomination, Trump yet again unleashed a racist attack on Haley’s birth name on Friday, calling her “Nimbra” three times in a post on Truth Social. Haley was born Nimarata Nikki Randhawa, and has always gone by her middle name. Since the start of 2024, Trump has been promoting baseless birther conspiracies about Haley, alleging that she is ineligible to run for president because her parents were not yet US citizens when she was born and purposefully butchering her name. (Despite these attacks, Haley continues to claim that the United States has “never” been a racist country.)
Asked by reporters Friday about Trump spreading birtherism lies, Haley said she’d “let people decide what he means by his attacks,” adding, “What we know is, look, he’s clearly insecure if he goes and does these temper tantrums if he’s spending millions of dollars on TV. He’s insecure, he knows that something’s wrong.”
Trump trotted out another conspiracy in his Friday morning post, claiming that New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, who has been campaigning for Haley, “should spend more time keeping Democrats from voting in the Republican Primary.” New Hampshire allows undeclared voters to vote in either primary, but registered Democratic voters are not allowed to vote in Monday’s GOP contest.
Haley responded to the claim in a post on X, formerly Twitter, saying the GOP frontrunner’s post was “another reason we need to move on from Trump: too many lies.” And, responding to Trump’s argument that she’s “weak on China, Russia, Borders, and Crime,” the former South Carolina governor bragged about being “tougher on China and Russia than Trump ever was “and passing “the toughest illegal immigration law in the country as governor.”
And when Trump isn’t attacking Haley, he’s apparently getting her confused with other politicians. In his Friday speech, Trump seemed to mix up Haley and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, accusing Haley of being “in charge of security” at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The odd mixup was particularly ironic given Trump’s constant claims that President Joe Biden is suffering from age-induced mental infirmity. “[Biden] can’t put two sentences together,” Trump said Friday. “Can’t put two sentences together. He needs a teleprompter.”
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Jack McCordick
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Biden Blasts Trump's Plan To Impose A National Abortion Ban Without Congress Or The Courts
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The Biden-Harris campaign called out the proposed plan to have Donald Trump unilaterally impose a national abortion ban if he returns to the White House.
NOTUS reported on the conservative plan:
Anti-abortion activists have their eyes on a bigger prize: If former President Donald Trump wins a second term in the White House, they hope and expect that he’ll effectively ban abortions throughout the United States by prohibiting the shipment not just of abortion drugs, but any tools doctors could use to induce an abortion.
They’re pinning their hopes on the Comstock Act, a series of laws enacted in 1873 that prohibit the shipment of “every article or thing designed, adapted or intended for producing abortion.” The law was essentially unenforceable during the Roe era, but a federal judge in Texas ruled in 2023 that the Comstock Act prohibits the shipment of the two drugs used in more than half of all abortions today.
Such an enforcement of Comstock would ban anything used to perform an abortion. Equipment and medication would no longer be shipped through the mail. Trump could unilaterally impose a national abortion ban without Congress or the courts doing a thing.
Biden campaign spokesperson Shea Necheles responded in a statement provided to PoliticusUSA, “Every day, Donald Trump and his allies are clearly laying out their dangerous plan to inflict more medical chaos and cruelty on women across this country. Overturning Roe wasn’t enough; now they are running to ban abortion nationwide, with or without Congress. But voters have also been clear: they will not stand for Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans’ attacks on their reproductive rights. This November will be no different.”
The far-right is looking for ways to sidestep democracy to implement their unpopular agenda. When a Republican says they won’t vote for a national abortion ban what they are leaving out is that they might not have to because Donald Trump will do it for them.
Democracy and basic human rights are on the ballot in 2024 and the American people need to vote accordingly.
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We have been honored to be able to put your interests first for 14 years as we only answer to our readers and we will not compromise on that fundamental, core PoliticusUSA value.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
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Jason Easley
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Nikki Haley Continues to Insist the US Has Never Been Racist, as Trump Launches Racist Attacks Against Her
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On Thursday night, Nikki Haley continued to bizarrely drive home her belief that the United States, where it was once acceptable to own a person based on the color of their skin, has “never” been a racist country. Even as she’s been the subject of racist attacks by the front-runner for the GOP nomination!
When asked by Jake Tapper, during a CNN town hall, whether she stood by her remarks to Fox & Friends that the US is not, and has never been, racist, the GOP presidential hopeful responded by citing the Declaration of Independence, saying, “It was that men are created equal with unalienable rights, right? That was what we all knew.” While acknowledging that there was “plenty of racism” that her family had to deal with when she was growing up in South Carolina—a state that literally seceded from the Union over fears that Abraham Lincoln was going to make people stop enslaving others—she nevertheless declared, “I want every brown and Black child to…say, ‘No, I don’t live in a country that was formed on racism. I live in a country where they wanted all people to be equal and to make sure that they had life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’”
After Tapper pushed back, saying the US was quite clearly “founded institutionally on many racist precepts, including slavery,” Haley claimed that “the intent” behind America’s founding was “to do the right thing,” adding that she refused “to believe that the premise of when they formed our country was based on the fact that it was a racist country to start with.” This is obviously completely absurd given that, among other things, the US Constitution (1) acknowledged that certain people were not free and (2) decreed that each of those people, whose race you can probably guess, would be counted as only three fifths of a human.
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Also absurd is the idea that the US does not currently have a racism problem, given that Haley herself has recently been the subject of racist attacks by the man expected to win the GOP nomination. When asked about Donald Trump’s circulation of a post falsely claiming that she was ineligible to be president because her parents were not citizens when she was born, as well as his decision to refer to her as “Nimrada”—
a misspelled version of Haley’s given name, Nimarata—the former governor told Tapper, “I know President Trump well. That’s what he does when he feels threatened; that’s what he does when he feels insecure.” She added: “I know that I am a threat. I know that’s why he’s doing that. So it’s not gonna waste any energy from me. I’m gonna continue to focus on the things that people want to talk about and not get into the name-calling back with him.”
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Bess Levin
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‘Holy S**t!’: Impressionist Goes Meta On Trump And Absolutely Nails It
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Matt Friend impersonated the former president “s**tting on other Trump impressions” by Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon and Alec Baldwin.
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Elise Stefanik Is “at the Top” of Trump’s VP Short List: Report
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Given the way Donald Trump treated his last vice president—i.e., siccing a bloodthirsty mob on the guy and then claiming he deserved chants calling for his hanging—you might think very few people would be jazzed about the idea of getting the number two job this time around. But—surprise! There are, in fact, many a Republican jockeying for the gig. Currently, though, it appears that Trump has his eye on one candidate in particular: New York representative Elise Stefanik.
NBC News reports that at “a candlelit dinner with Mar-a-Lago members in late December,” the ex-president asked his dining companions whom he should pick as a running mate, and when Stefanik’s name came up, he approvingly responded, “She’s a killer.” Since then, “Trump and a growing group of allies have started to look more closely at Stefanik as a running mate, according to eight people familiar with the matter, including people in Trump’s orbit, Stefanik fundraising bundlers, and former Trump administration officials,” the outlet wrote. While Stefanik has most recently been in the news for her questioning of three university presidents about antisemitism on their campuses, Trump has reportedly long been interested in her.
Per NBC:
Stefanik has made her loyalty to Trump abundantly clear over the years, including by:
Asked about the prospect of serving as Trump’s number two during an interview on Meet the Press, Stefanik responded, “I, of course, would be honored to serve in any capacity in a Trump administration.” On Wednesday, CNN reported that the GOP lawmaker would be campaigning with Trump in New Hampshire later this week.
Of course, nothing has been officially decided yet, and other names reportedly on the list include Arkansas governor and former Trump press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders; South Dakota governor Kristi Noem; Senator Marsha Blackburn; and failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake. Nikki Haley’s name is also said to be in the mix, though there are a number of people in Trump’s orbit who are dead set against her, according to Politico:
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Bess Levin
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Donald Trump Is Privately Pressuring His Opponents to Bow Out
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Heading into Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, Donald Trump is making an aggressive play to lock up the Republican nomination by pressuring Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley to drop out. According to sources, Trump has been calling DeSantis and Haley allies to make the case that the race is over. Trump is pulling 50% of likely New Hampshire Republican primary voters, according to a Boston Globe/Suffolk University/NBC10 poll released this week, while Haley trails at 34% and DeSantis clocks in at just 5%. “The plan is to back all the donors and Fox off [the other candidates] and close it out by next Wednesday,” a Republican close to Trump told me.
Trump is following a carrot-and-stick strategy to get Haley and DeSantis to drop out of the race, sources briefed on the Trump campaign’s thinking told me. On Monday night, Trump uncharacteristically extended an olive branch to his rivals during his victory speech after crushing them in the Iowa caucuses. “We’re gonna come together. It’s gonna happen soon too. It’s gonna happen soon,” he told supporters in Des Moines.
Meanwhile, Trump has been racking up endorsements, lending his victory an air of inevitability. Ted Cruz this week became the 25th Republican senator to endorse Trump, following on the heels of another onetime rival, Marco Rubio. “Congratulations to President Trump on that dominating victory. And at this point, I believe this race is over,” Cruz told Fox News’ Sean Hannity. Behind the scenes, Trump has been on a charm offensive to increase his support. According to multiple sources, Trump has been calling South Carolina senator Tim Scott, seeking his endorsement before the February 24 primary in Haley’s home state. (The New York Times also reported Thursday on Trump’s efforts to cultivate Scott.) “[Trump] talks to Scott fairly regularly, and we hope there is an endorsement before South Carolina,” a Trump adviser said. A Scott spokesperson did not immediately comment.
Trump is trying to quickly put the nomination away while navigating treacherous legal waters, appearing in a New York courtroom on Wednesday for a defamation lawsuit before holding a New Hampshire rally that night. (Trump is also contending with four criminal cases, including two over 2020 election subversion, that should play out amid the 2024 election.) On Friday, Trump will campaign in New Hampshire alongside New York representative Elise Stefanik, a VP contender who this week called on “every other candidate—all of whom have no chance to win—to drop out.”
Of course, Trump being Trump, he is willing to go scorched-earth himself on Haley and DeSantis. On Tuesday, he attacked Haley in highly personal terms on his social media platform, Truth Social, by misspelling her birth name, Nimarata: “Anyone listening to Nikki ‘Nimrada’ Haley’s wacked out speech last night, would think that she won the Iowa Primary. She didn’t, and she couldn’t even beat a very flawed Ron DeSanctimonious, who’s out of money, and out of hope.”
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Gabriel Sherman
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Ted Cruz “Enthusiastically” Endorses Trump, the Guy Who Called His Wife Ugly and Suggested His Father Was in Cahoots With JFK’s Assassin
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Many people in Washington have no shame and zero dignity. One person who demonstrates this on a near-daily basis? Senator Ted Cruz.
The lawmaker from Texas again proved that he is perfectly happy to debase himself for sport when he endorsed Donald Trump for president last night, writing on X, “I am proud to endorse Donald J. Trump for President. Now is the time for us to unite to oust Joe Biden and save our country from the Democrats’ destructive agenda.” In an interview with Sean Hannity, Cruz spoke about his endorsement of of Trump, saying, “I look forward to supporting him enthusiastically.’
Obviously, there are a lot of reasons why people should not endorse Trump—from the 2021 insurrection to his continued, not-very-subtle calls for further violence on his behalf. But when it comes to Cruz specifically, there are a few rather personal reasons one might have thought the GOP lawmaker would not be so eager to enthusiastically embrace Trump’s candidacy. They include:
- The fact that Trump suggested Cruz’s father was in cahoots with the man who killed John F. Kennedy, saying, “His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being—you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous. What is this, right prior to his being shot, and nobody even brings it up. They don’t even talk about that. That was reported, and nobody talks about it. But I think it’s horrible. I mean, what was he doing—what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting? It’s horrible.”
- The fact that Trump threatened to “spill the beans” about Cruz’s wife, Heidi Cruz
- The fact that Trump implied Heidi Cruz was ugly
For his part, Cruz previously called Trump a “sniveling coward,” a “bully,” a “small and petty man who is intimidated by strong women,” and a “pathological liar” who “lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth.” Then, Cruz went on to endorse Trump to win in 2016, 2020, and now 2024. (The Texas lawmaker also tried to help Trump steal the last election, because of course he did.)
Will Cruz ever acknowledge how wild it is for him to go to bat for Trump given the ex-president’s attacks on his family—as well as the extremely accurate things he said about the former guy before he decided to forget all that? We’ll give you two guesses, but you’ll only need one.
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Bess Levin
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Nikki Haley Follows Up Cringey Civil War Remarks by Declaring the US Has “Never” Been a Racist Country
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Does Nikki Haley think minimizing the United States’s history when it comes to slavery and racism is the key to winning the GOP presidential nomination? It kind of seems like it!
Following up her curious decision last month to not cite slavery as a cause of the Civil War—which she later defended by saying, among other things, “I had Black friends growing up”—the former South Carolina governor declared on Tuesday that the United States, where owning a Black person was once legal, has “never” been a racist country. That’s right, never been racist, including the period in which it was acceptable for Black people to be someone’s property.
Haley’s claim came in response to a question from Fox & Friends cohost Brian Kilmeade, who asked the candidate if she thinks the GOP is a “racist party.” Her full answer was “No. We’re not a racist country, Brian. We’ve never been a racist country.” She added: “Our goal is to make sure that today is better than yesterday,” she continued. “Are we perfect? No. But our goal is to always make sure we try and be more perfect every day that we can.”
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While maintaining that America has “never,” ever, been a racist country, Haley also told Kilmeade, “I faced racism when I was growing up. But I can tell you, today is a lot better than it was then.” She added: “I don’t want my kids growing up where they’re sitting there thinking that they’re disadvantaged because of a color or a gender. I want them to know that if they work hard, they can do and be anything they want to be in America.”
Haley also apparently thinks the key to the GOP nomination is pretending not to know that Trump has literally been found liable for sexual abuse
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Bess Levin
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Who Was Vivek Ramaswamy’s Campaign Actually For?
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Vivek Ramaswamy was never a credible presidential candidate. The biotech multimillionaire—who dropped out of the Republican primary on Monday after a distant fourth-place finish in the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses—instead seemed to run a calculated campaign aimed at boosting his personal brand, seducing conservative media heavyweights, and landing him a future title should Donald Trump retake the White House. Indeed, he spent much of the race flattering the former president, regurgitating his populist talking points, and even imitating his belligerent style on the debate stage.
For what it’s worth, Ramaswamy has repeatedly declined to say whether he would serve in a Trump administration, claiming he is not a “plan B person.” But it is difficult to imagine why else he would spend his candidacy serving as an unofficial surrogate to his chief rival. During an August interview, Trump himself appeared receptive to naming Ramaswamy as his vice presidential choice after host Glenn Beck floated the idea. “He’s a very, very, very intelligent person. He’s got good energy, and he could be some form of something,” Trump said. “I think he’d be very good.”
On his way out the door, however, Ramaswamy may have extinguished Trump’s goodwill by promising to save the legally embattled ex-president with a presidential pardon. “Vivek started his campaign as a great supporter,” Trump later claimed Friday over Truth Social, but “now all he does is disguise his support in the form of deceitful campaign tricks. Very sly.” By exiting the race and immediately throwing his support behind Trump, Ramaswamy may have taken a step toward reconciliation.
Apart from wooing Trump, Ramaswamy has spent the past year making the rounds with just about any conservative media personality willing to hear him out, including former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and right-wing podcasters Tim Pool, Candace Owens, and Benny Johnson. To pique the interests of these relatively fringe characters, Ramaswamy cosigned a number of conspiracy theories and extreme policies prominent in online right-wing circles. He has claimed the Capitol riot was “an inside job” carried out by federal agents; defended the racist “Great Replacement” narrative; called for deporting American-born children of undocumented immigrants; and said the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
There was also the youth angle to his campaign. At 38, Ramaswamy was the youngest Republican candidate. He advertised this fact by holding Instagram livestreams and appearing in TikToks with Jake Paul, an internet celebrity who urged Iowans to caucus for Ramaswamy despite the freezing temperatures currently afflicting the state. “There’s a bigger purpose than being cold sometimes, and that’s what I think about in the ice bath every morning,” Paul said during a joint live stream with Ramaswamy on Sunday.
Ramaswamy ultimately finished Iowa with less than half the delegates of bronze medalist and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, who narrowly trailed Florida governor Ron DeSantis. In first place was Trump, who secured more than 50% of the state’s delegates.
Maybe the cold proved too much. Or maybe Iowans of the “America First” persuasion realized they could get the real thing by simply supporting Trump over his more junior imitator. Whatever the reason for his defeat, it is possible that Ramaswamy now sits exactly where he always wanted to be at this point in the race: removed and unburdened, free to lick Trump’s boots without having to distinguish himself or feign opposition. “I am suspending my campaign and endorsing Donald J. Trump,” Ramaswamy wrote in a Monday night post. “[I] will do everything I can to make sure he is the next U.S. President.”
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Caleb Ecarma
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Vivek Ramaswamy Never Had a Chance Even Though Elon Musk Pushed Him on X
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Elon Musk tried to utilize the power of his social media platform to push Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, posting that he believed the Republican would “exceed the polls” when the votes were counted. Yet, Ramaswamy suspended his campaign after winning only 7.7% of the votes and just three delegates in the Iowa caucuses.
Ramaswamy ran as a more rabid version of Donald Trump in an attempt to appeal to Trump voters, but they remain true to their Chosen One — the man indicted on 91 criminal counts, who was also found liable for both rape and fraud recently.
Ramaswamy, who defended his repetition of debunked conspiracy theories about January 6th and the great replacement theory, claimed his campaign had been about “truth” in his statement:
“This entire campaign is about speaking the TRUTH. We did not achieve our goal tonight & we need an America-First patriot in the White House. The people spoke loud & clear about who they want. Tonight I am suspending my campaign and endorsing Donald J. Trump and will do everything I can to make sure he is the next U.S. President. I am enormously proud of this team, this movement, and our country.”
Ramaswamy had promised to pardon Trump if elected president and posed with fans wearing “Save Trump, Vote Vivek” t-shirts.
Ramaswamy is said to share “values” with Elon Musk and said in August of 2023 that if elected in 2024, he would run the government like Musk runs his companies.
Elon has since been in the news being accused of doing illegal drugs and told major advertisers to “Go f*ck yourself” during The New York Times’ annual DealBook Summit after they left his social media platform due to its inability to ensure brand safety due to the proliferation of neo-Nazis and other hate accounts.
Musk referred to advertisers choosing to spend money elsewhere as “blackmail.” (It’s actually capitalism in action, but given that Elon Musk’s companies take advantage of taxpayer-funded subsidies, he might not understand the concept as much as his Libertarian supporters would like to believe.)
The billionaire owner of X/Twitter, who sees himself as some kind of political pundit now, has amplified racist attacks on Black people in recent days after creating a scandal for amplifying antisemitic posts on his embattled social media platform “X” (actually known as Twitter). Musk opined in response to low poll numbers for Ramaswamy several days ago: “My guess is that Vivek will far exceed the polls when the votes are counted.”
Elon didn’t leave it there. He also wrote on Sunday “I think you’re right” to an account posting: “I truly believe this Monday @VivekGRamaswamy is going to shock the world. This is going to be a major win for the country.”
Previously, Elon Musk amplified Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, who launched his campaign on Musk’s platform, in what turned out to be an embarrassing fail tech-wise.
The fact is Vivek Ramaswamy never had a chance with Trump supporters, because of his name and the color of his skin. But his message of ruling the country like a ruthless business person who maybe does illegal drugs and gets by on taxpayer subsidies while trying to sue the labor board (NLRB) after being accused of trying to silence critical employees and paying off a flight attendant $250,000 for something Musk claims he didn’t do didn’t seem to resonate, either. To be fair, that message just sounds better to the fascist-inclined when coming from a white man who has established a history of getting away with criminal behavior.
Success in technology does not, it turns out, have any relationship to understanding voters. However, it’s instructive that Elon Musk can’t move the needle, let alone even guess how less than 100,000 of his favored White people will vote, yet thinks he can drive a diverse country made up of 330 million plus people to vote as he sees fit, all because he bought Twitter.
While the pro-fascist experiment of X pushing far Right propaganda is working to silence democratic movements and collective awareness of injustices, it is not working in terms of picking candidates.
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We have been honored to be able to put your interests first for 14 years as we only answer to our readers and we will not compromise on that fundamental, core PoliticusUSA value.
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Sarah Jones
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Donald Trump wins Iowa caucuses, networks project
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Former President Donald Trump has won the Iowa caucuses, CNN, the Associated Press, and Fox News have projected.
The Associated Press reported that Trump has “far more than half” of the votes counted as of 8:31 p.m. EST. Results from eight Iowa counties are in.
Trump defeated Republican challengers former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy in the Iowa caucuses held Monday, per CNN projections.
The news comes as Iowans braved sub-freezing temperatures to vote in the caucuses.
Former president Donald Trump visits a caucus site at the Horizon Event Center on January 15, 2024, in Clive, Iowa. CNN is projecting that Trump to win the state’s GOP caucus, the first Republican primary contest in the 2024 Republican presidential nominating process.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty
Newsweek reached out via email on Monday night to Trump’s representatives for comment.
This story is breaking, and updates will follow.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Biden Sets Democratic Fundraising Record And None Of It Will Go To Legal Bills
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President Biden set a record with the most cash on hand of any Democratic candidate in history, and none of it will go to cover legal fees.
Biden Sets Democratic Fundraising Record
The Biden campaign announced:
Today, Team Biden-Harris announced that it raised more than $97 million in the fourth quarter of 2023, ending the year with a powerful display of enthusiasm, strength, and historic resources heading into the election year. The team is also reporting a historic $117 million in cash on hand, the highest total amassed by any Democratic candidate in history at this point in the cycle.
Team Biden-Harris’ Q4 haul was driven in large part by the strength of our grassroots support, which continued to grow in Q4.
December was our strongest grassroots fundraising month since launch—breaking the record previously set just one month prior in November.
Democrats have had a fundraising advantage for years that Republicans have tried to close but failed. Trump famously ran out of money during the 2020 campaign and could be in a dire situation again in 2024.
Fundraising Is A Measure Of Intensity Of Support
The Biden campaign provided a breakdown of their recent quarterly fundraising to PoliticusUSA:
- December was our strongest grassroots fundraising month since launch—breaking the record previously set just one month before in November.
- Since launch, nearly 1 million supporters have made more than 2.3 million contributions, a clear signal that donors are taking consistent action early in our fundraising program.
- Additionally, we now have more than 130,000 sustaining donors who have committed to donating every month—nearly double the amount at this point in the 2020 cycle.
- 97% of all our donations in Q4 were under $200 and the average grassroots contribution was $41.88.
Biden isn’t hitting up corporations and billionaires for cash to sustain his campaign. His donations are coming from small donors, and people who donate to a campaign are some of the voters who are most likely to vote in November. On one level, it is common sense. Donating to a campaign is a personal financial commitment. The people who make that commitment are almost certain to cast their ballots.
In political terms, the fundraising and cash-on-hand numbers reveal that Biden has a passionate and committed base that is willing to fund his campaign and is not going anywhere. This is an idea that runs counter to the polling and media narratives.
Trump Is Using Much Of His Fundraising To Pay Legal Bills
Trump was able to raise money initially off of the indictments against him, but that fundraising dried up.
The former president has reportedly been bleeding cash on legal bills. It has also been reported that Trump has not been holding his big rallies because his legal bills are draining so much of the money he is raising that he can’t afford large rallies.
Trump’s legal expenses will only grow as his cases get closer to trial.
President Biden will be able to spend his cash on his campaign, and he will be helping other Democrats win.
Trump is spending his money on the Republican primary and lawyers.
A Special Message From PoliticusUSA
If you are in a position to donate purely to help us keep the doors open on PoliticusUSA during what is a critical election year, please do so here.
We have been honored to be able to put your interests first for 14 years as we only answer to our readers and we will not compromise on that fundamental, core PoliticusUSA value.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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Jason Easley
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“One of Them Has to Emerge”: Scenes From Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley’s Winter of Wishcasting in Iowa
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The final debate before the Iowa caucuses had just ended, and the spin room at Drake University in Des Moines was full of bluster. Surrogates for Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, who had just spent more than two hours taking swings at one another, were insisting Wednesday that their preferred candidate had landed a haymaker. But amid all the projections of confidence that cold evening in Iowa, where jackknifed semis and snowbound cars littered the ditches every few miles, there was also a noticeable effort by both camps to temper expectations ahead of the first contest of the primary Monday.
Haley will finish “better than most expect,” former GOP congressman Will Hurd—who dropped his own long shot 2024 bid to support Haley—told me when I asked what a “strong showing” would look like.
“We have no pressure on us,” a DeSantis surrogate said when I asked him the same question, suggesting that the Florida governor could take a victory lap wherever he finished in Monday’s caucus.
Even Donald Trump—the dominant front-runner who once again snubbed the debate, counterprogramming it this time with a Fox News town hall two miles away—has laid the groundwork to save face should his victory in the Hawkeye State prove less decisive than he wants, preemptively accusing DeSantis of “trying to rig” the caucus.
For the most part, the outcome of the contest—and the primary race in general—has seemed more or less a foregone conclusion: Trump, despite his two impeachments and 91 criminal charges and explicitly authoritarian platform, seems to be coasting toward victory, while his challengers play for second—or perhaps a spot in his potential administration. But all the hedging reflects the uncertainties that linger here, even in a contest that hasn’t seemed particularly competitive so far.
“Every candidate has exactly the same opponent, and that opponent’s name is ‘Expected,’” said Dennis Goldford, a professor of political science at Drake University, which hosted the CNN debate between Haley and DeSantis January 10. “So the question is whether anybody exceeds expectations—whether somebody like Trump fails to meet expectations.”
“That,” he added, “will determine how far this nomination process continues down the road.”
Trump—who leads his two closest rivals by about 20 points combined here in polls and has run as a de facto incumbent—is expected to win out in this highly unusual caucus. But the margin of victory could prove important. Should he clear 50%, he would demonstrate “his grip on the party,” said veteran Iowa Republican strategist Jimmy Centers, and perhaps make his march to the nomination seem all the more inevitable. But a narrower-than-expected victory for the former president could embolden the anti-Trump wing of the party, suggesting a potential path to victory for an alternative in a head-to-head matchup. The margins matter in that second-place race too. “One of them has to emerge,” Centers told me of DeSantis and Haley. “I think if whoever finishes second is able to put four to five points between them and third, that clearly demonstrates that there is a gap.”
DeSantis had entered the race as an apparent heir to Trump’s throne—a culture warrior with all of Trump’s cruelty but less of his chaos. “I’m…the only one running that has beaten the left time and time again,” as the Florida governor put it in his opening statement at last week’s debate. But despite his campaign’s robust ground game in Iowa, Haley has seemed to build momentum in recent weeks; she’s pulled ahead of DeSantis in Iowa polling averages—and has even come within a few points of Trump in New Hampshire, the site of the second primary contest.
“Nikki Haley is by far the best we’ve seen,” a volunteer for her campaign told the crowd last week at a stop in Ankeny, a suburb of Des Moines. He and his wife usually “cancel each other out” at the ballot box, he told the group, but this cycle, they’re both in on Haley. “If she can unite the two of us, she can bring this country together.”
The former United Nations ambassador has made electability the centerpiece of her bid, positioning herself as a more traditional Republican than her opponents and better-equipped to lead than the “couple of 80-year-olds running for president”—a reference to Trump and President Joe Biden, who are 77 and 81, respectively. But isn’t the electability argument undermined by the fact that one of those 80-year-olds is currently leading her by more than 30 points in Iowa polls?
“I hope not,” one attendee told me after that January 11 rally in Ankeny, as Sheryl Crow’s “Woman in the White House” blared from the speakers. Voters here, who pride themselves on their ability to kick the tires on the candidates who come through every four years, can sometimes bristle at the sense that they are being taken for granted. And while she voted for Trump twice and considers him a successful president, “chaos follows him,” the attendee told me, adding that she hopes the party is ready to move on. “He’s just too much,” another attendee said.
That may be true, but it’s not clear if Haley or DeSantis are enough. Chris Christie, the race’s most strident Trump critic, suspended his campaign last week with blunt assessments of his former rivals: DeSantis is “petrified,” the former New Jersey governor said, in comments picked up by a hot mic, and Haley is “not up to this.”
“She’s going to get smoked,” he predicted.
Both Haley and DeSantis are hoping to change that prevailing narrative Monday night, which will play out against the backdrop of the winter’s first big storm, with below-zero temperatures now settling in as Iowans head to their caucus sites. “It’s gonna be frigid,” Centers, the GOP strategist, told me. “I think we’ll still be good on turnout. But now we’re gonna find out.”
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Eric Lutz
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Elon Musk predicts Vivek Ramaswamy will 'far exceed the polls' in Iowa caucuses despite Trump's late attacks
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Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech entrepreneur, self-styled conservative firebrand, and long-shot Republican presidential candidate, believes he and Tesla CEO Elon Musk see eye-to-eye on many important issues, such as free speech.
And this weekend, ahead of Iowa’s presidential caucuses on Monday evening, Musk’s posts on X suggested not only his support for Ramaswamy, but a belief that he’ll do far better in the state than polls suggest.
“My guess is that Vivek will far exceed the polls when the votes are counted,” Musk posted, in response to a shared Fox News video on Ramaswamy’s low poll numbers versus the support that Iowa Rep. Steven Holt (R-Iowa) said he was seeing.
Musk also wrote on Sunday “I think you’re right” in response to an X user who posted: “I truly believe this Monday @VivekGRamaswamy is going to shock the world. This is going to be a major win for the country.”
Musk also responded “Yes” when another user asked “Do you trust Vivek Ramaswamy?”
But expectations for Ramaswamy are low. In a recent Suffolk University poll, 54% of 500 likely Republican caucus goers selected former president Donald Trump as their preferred candidate, versus 20% for former South Carolina governor Haley, 13% for Floria governor DeSantis, and just 6% for Ramaswamy.
Holt, however, said “I don’t believe the polls,” adding that many of his constituents have told him that Ramaswamy is often not presented as an option on the surveys. “Iowa has delivered surprises before. We’ll see what happens,” he told Fox.
Ramaswamy has repeatedly defended Trump throughout his presidential run, and has said that he’ll pardon him if elected. His plan seems to rest on Trump becoming ineligible to run due to his various legal difficulties, at which point Ramaswamy hopes to inherit his base.
Ramaswamy posted a photo of himself to X on Saturday with six fans wearing a shirt from his campaign reading “Save Trump, Vote Vivek.” Those shirts seemed to have irked the Trump side.
Trump’s senior campaign adviser, Chris LaCivita, responded to the post by calling Ramaswamy the campaign’s “number one fraud,” adding that “Trump doesn’t need ‘saving.’”
And Trump, who had refrained from attacking Ramaswamy, let loose in a Truth Social post, writing that “Vivek is not MAGA.”
Ramaswamy responded to Trump’s post by writing on X: “It’s an unfortunate move by his campaign advisors…I’m not going to criticize him in response to this late attack.”
Meanwhile, Musk, who in August backed Ramaswamy becoming vice president, noted that the GOP candidate appeared to have held more meetings with Iowans than his rivals.
“The power of an extreme work ethic,” he wrote, “is usually underestimated.”
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Steve Mollman
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Legal experts gearing up for feared military takeover by Donald Trump
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Legal experts are said to be planning to push back against Donald Trump‘s potential efforts at a broad military takeover in the event that he is reelected in November, according to a new report.
The former president is among the field of candidates seeking the 2024 GOP presidential nomination as part of his bid to retake the White House. National polling averages have consistently suggested that he leads the pack by a wide margin, regularly giving him around or above 50 percent support from likely Republican voters.
In a report published on Sunday, NBC News found that “a loose-knit network of public interest groups and lawmakers is quietly devising plans to try to foil any efforts to expand presidential power,” amid recent comments and moves from Trump indicating his intention to pursue his political agenda if reelected this year.
In November 2023, The Washington Post published a report outlining Trump’s alleged plans to invoke the Insurrection Act on the very first day of his hypothetical second term in the White House, allowing him to use military force to quash protests against his presidency. During the last months of his presidency, Trump was reportedly told by lawyer Jeffrey Clark that the Insurrection Act could be used to shut down protests if he had attempted to remain in office despite losing to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
Former President Donald Trump attends a military academy graduation in June 2020. A new report has revealed a developing plan among legal experts to combat Trump’s potential military takeover if reelected this year.
David Dee Delgado/Getty Images
Meanwhile, during a town hall event hosted by Fox News host Sean Hannity last month, Hannity pressed Trump to pledge that he would never “abuse power as retribution against anybody,” as had been suggested in recent reports, if he’s reelected. In response, Trump suggested that he would only behave in such a way on the first day of his hypothetical second term.
“Except for day one,” Trump said. “No, no, no, other than day one. We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.” His drilling comment was a reference to his vow to expand oil drilling in the U.S.
Speaking with NBC News, Mary McCord, executive director of the Institution for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law and participant in this initiative, said that they are preparing to bring any number of lawsuits against the former president depending on the actions he might take if reelected.
“We’re already starting to put together a team to think through the most damaging types of things that he [Trump] might do so that we’re ready to bring lawsuits if we have to,” McCord said.
The group’s plan for the moment, according to the report, is to identify and connect like-minded individuals and organizations who will be able to confront Trump’s potential overreach “from day one.”
The report also mentioned participants “combing through policy papers being crafted for a future conservative administration,” likely referring to the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” a plan being crafted in the event of a Republican presidential victory this year to greatly expand the powers afforded to the executive branch of the U.S. government.
Political analyst and historian Julian Zelizer previously told Newsweek that Trump allies could “go very far” with the ideas being put forward by the project, which says that Article II of the U.S. Constitution makes it “abundantly clear” that the executive branch’s powers are solely invested in the president.
Newsweek reached out to Trump’s office via email for comment.
While Trump is heavily favored to once again clinch the GOP presidential nomination, the outlook for the general election remains less clear-cut. While news cycles have been recently dominated by coverage of President Joe Biden’s troubled approval ratings, polls so far have shown that he and Trump are neck-and-neck in a hypothetical November rematch, with some giving Biden the edge and some skewing for Trump.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Iowa Poll: Nearly Half of Nikki Haley Voters Prefer Biden Over Trump
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Heading into Monday’s Iowa caucuses, a near-majority of likely votes for former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who has been rising in the polls since December, are coming from voters who would prefer Joe Biden over Donald Trump in a hypothetical 2020 rematch.
That’s according to the latest NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll of Iowa voters, released Saturday night. Unsurprisingly, a super-majority of Iowa GOP caucusgoers said they’d support Trump against Biden. But for 43 percent of Haley voters, Biden was the preferred choice. Only 23 percent said they’d break for Trump, while 27 percent said they’d vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or another third-party candidate. The rest were either unsure of their choice or said they wouldn’t vote.
The results demonstrate Haley’s inroads among independent and moderate voters during this primary campaign season. “Haley is consolidating the anti-Trump vote,” pollster J. Ann Selzer, who is in her third decade of conducting this Iowa primary poll, told NBC. “She does well with the people who define themselves as anti-Trump.” On Monday, those voters will include some anti-Trump Iowa independents and Democrats, who are planning on registering to caucus as Republicans to vote for Haley, Axios reported Sunday.
While Haley still trails Trump significantly in Iowa, her campaign hopes that an expectation-exceeding performance will boost her chances in New Hampshire, where the electorate has a considerably higher share of independents. Chris Sununu, the state’s moderate Republican governor, has endorsed Haley and campaigned for her across the state in recent weeks. A poll published last week had Haley down 14 points to Trump in the Granite State.
Haley received another boost to her anti-Trump bona fides Sunday with an endorsement from Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, who argued that “the momentum” is with the former South Carolina governor.
Last week, Hogan stepped down from No Labels, a centrist political organization, spurring speculation that he was mulling an independent presidential bid. His endorsement of Haley Sunday appeared to pour cold water on that possibility. “She’s 17 points ahead of Joe Biden, and it is a tossup with Trump and Biden,” Hogan said in a CNN appearance. “Yes, it is time for the party to get behind Nikki Haley.”
Sunday’s poll also shows Haley overtaking Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, with Haley garnering 20 percent of the likely Iowa vote to DeSantis’ 16 percent. Trump, who has maintained a double-digit lead for the entirety of the campaign season, notched nearly 50 percent of the total tally.
The result is especially dire news for the DeSantis campaign, which has poured resources into the Hawkeye State, hoping to peel off evangelical voters and pull off a solid performance against Trump. The campaign was also hoping that an endorsement from the state’s popular conservative governor, Kim Reynolds, would boost its prospects. According to Sunday’s poll, 64 percent of DeSantis voters indicated they’d vote for Trump if he is the nominee.
Yet the encouraging topline polling numbers for Haley this week may be less robust than they appear. Caucusgoers were also asked about their enthusiasm for their preferred candidates, and Haley supporters indicated they were much less excited about going to the polls than those who will likely vote for Trump. Haley’s favorability numbers have also declined in Iowa over the past month. Speaking to the Des Moines Register, Seltzer said, “The deep data on [Haley] suggest she looks stronger in the poll than she could on caucus night.”
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Jack McCordick
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