the DON JONES INDEX…
		GAINS POSTED in GREEN LOSSES POSTED in RED 1/15/24... 15,031.69 1/8/24... 15,032.37
	6/27/13… 15,000.00
(THE DOW JONES INDEX: 1/15/24... 37,592.98; 1/15/24... 37,592.98; 6/27/13… 15,000.00)

LESSON for JANUARY TWENTY SECOND, 2024 – “ALL OVER but the RETRIBUTIONING!”

Once and quite likely future President Donald “I am your Retribution” Trump blew through the Iowa causuces a week ago like the deep freeze and snowfall that significantly dampened turnout, giving his two surviving challengers an excuse, if not a reason, to press on.

Trump garnered 51 percent of the vote in the compleAnd mysterious caucus-counting aracana. Florida Governor and Disney hater Ron DeSantis, who said he was staking all of his expectations on Iowa, finished a distant second at 20%. Former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who campaigned almost as hard in Iowa but who has said her make or break moment will be in the New Hampshire primaries tomorrow night finished with 19% in Iowa.

Conspiracy theorizing businessman Vivek Ramaswamy finished fourth and said he was dropping out of the race and endorsing Trump. Not endorsing Trump was former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie who quit before the delegates even began to caucus.

Most of the political people, pollsters, pundits, media and public agreed, after Iowa, that the race was effectively over, although Haley has polled within five to fifteen percentage points of Ol’ 45 and so could survive into her own South Carolina primary. But the experts and amateurs alike agreed that the only real obstacle in 78 year old Trump’s path to a Groundhog Day rematch with 81 year old President Biden in November lies with the courts, still finagling over 91 criminal and more civil cases as... in the most absurd scenario of an already chaotic year might... might possibly disqualify him from the ballot (which his handpicked Supreme Court is likely to wipe off the table) or even be convicted and jailed on the Georgia state criminal charges for which he cannot pardon himself.

Four years of a President serving from the Big House, as opposed to the White House? What will the Chinese think of that???

Back to Iowa and the almost unanimous conccurrance with hyper right wing Congressman Matt Gaetz from Saint Ron’s own Florida – disabusing a clueless cackle of competitors of hope or respite. “It’s over, man,” he shook his head (Guardian U.K., Jan. 16^th, Attachment One)

Denying the obvious and looking to steal a trope from Trump, Saint Ron played the victim card, telling supporters that: “They threw everything but the kitchen sink at us,” but insisting that “we’ve got our ticket punched out of Iowa,” DeSantis fantasized.

A ticket to nowhere, GUK wrote... or maybe back to Florida to do the job he’s being paid for.

DeSantis’s campaign lost staff throughout last year, while Never Back Down, the Super Pac supporting him, struggled to maintain donors and parted ways with a key strategist. In the final days before Iowa’s caucuses, DeSantis began referring to himself as an “underdog”, and on Monday, that status was confirmed when Trump won every county in the state, except for one that Haley picked up. DeSantis carried none, causing pundits to chuckle and GUK’s David Smith to dismiss the caucuses as “a sad circus”.

Opinion polls show Trump casting a giant shadow over the sparsely populated, snow-swept state despite campaigning far less there than his rivals Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley,” Smith predicted the beatdown a week ago Sunday (Attachment Two). “Most analyses say the question is not if he will win but by how much.”

Dismissing Iowa as a state where “(h)ogs outnumber people by more than seven to one,” the limey castigated it as “whiter and more rural than most of the US. It has hosted the official start of every presidential campaign for the last half-century, offering a test of humility as candidates brave the icy plains to visit churches, diners, farms and school gyms, look voters in the eye and make their pitch.

“But the old maxim that “all politics is local” applies less in today’s nationalised, media-driven political landscape... Trump is campaigning on the persona and mythology of Trump as much as anything else.

“People don’t even feel like they need to meet him in person. He’s become a standard bearer for people who feel disenfranchised by whatever they view as the establishment and, even though they get a lot of benefits from the Biden administration programmes, Biden has been terrible at selling them.”

But DeSantis hasn’t even been able to sell the theocrats on his own crusade against the infidels, the Democrats and Disney.

.
“Karen Johnson, a 67-year-old evangelical Christian, told the New York Times: “Trump is our David and our Goliath,” – neatly capturing his combination of sacred and profane.

Art Cullen, editor of the Storm Lake Times newspaper, said: “North-west Iowa, where I live, is the most conservative part of the state and it’s just very solidly pro-Trump, including a lot of evangelicals who Ron DeSantis has been trying to court.

“Trump is just dominant in Iowa. It’s going to be a good night for him.”

Smith, like most other reporters, defined a “good night” as winning half the vote – leaving Nikki and Ron to hope that the bad weather would keep overconfident MAGAnoids presumably indoors by the fireplace... probably eating pork chops and watching the CW.

A third-place finish for DeSantis on Monday could end his bid for the White House according to Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington predicted: “Ron DeSantis has bet the farm on Iowa and, if he finishes an ignominious third, he will be a dead man walking and the only question is how long will he walk before he collapses.

Alongside the “sad circus” and hogs, “fake dama” trotted alongside the candidates in GUK’s post-electoral as well as pre-electoral barnyard. “The voters who braved the bitter cold to officially kick off the Republican primary were, plainly, exactly the ones the former president needed and wanted – wrote the Guardian’s Osita Nwanevu (Attachment Three, Tuesday) while ABC’s entrance polls registered immigration and the economy as their top issues and additionally found that 63% of caucus-goers would consider Trump fit for the presidency even if he were convicted of a crime.

So cocky was the Trumpster that he seldom dropped in to taste a plate of bacon and chew the fat with farmers and derelicts of the plains... instead of Himself Djonald UnAvailable sent surrogates... South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, Gaetz and the boys, Don Junior and Eric. (Time, January 13^th Attachment Four) “DeSantis goes to 99 counties. Trump goes to six counties, but (Djonald’s) people show up from 99 counties because they come from all over the place,” an artist of autopsies explained

For the Trump campaign, the objective is to have such a dominant win that it deprives either DeSantis or Haley of the oxygen for a sustained challenge. Trump campaign officials toldl TIME they hoped to beat the record for the largest margin of victory in Iowa caucus history—13 points—set by Bob Dole in 1988.

He did, easily.

The Associated Press took only thirty minutes after the start of the caucuses to project a Trump landslide... calling the race at 8:37 PM EST, even earlier in Des Moines.

The Guardian timeline (Attachment Five) trekked back from midnight, when the victor offered an “unusually conciliatory” call for unity in his speech Monday night. “I really think this is time now for everybody, our country, to come together,” he said.

And then he celebrated poll findings that the majority of Iowa Republics did not accept the validity of the 2020 election results.

The losers were variously bitter, delusional or ominous. Surviving Trump’s assault by sink, Sankt Ronald glorified his second place finish (without mentioning the 30 point gap by which Trump also smooshed Bob Dole). “Our campaign is the last best hope of stopping the Trump-Biden nightmare,” Haley said.

Vivek Ramaswamy, finishing a distant fourth, reflected “Nobody knew who we were, nobody knew what we were up to, but together, we have created a movement that I think is going to carry our nation to the next level,” he said, without explaining what that level might be – and then he dropped out and endorsed Trump.

Next level? Ambassador to Pakistan as its war with Iran unfurls?

See a roster of GUK URLs on the development of the night as Attachment Six.

Why the MAGArout?

Time’s opinionator-in-chief Philip Elliott interviewed Tina Nguyen, author of “The MAGA Diaries” which, as you might expect, was not sympathetic – comparing the cult to Reagan with its catechism: ‘Screw this, we're burning it all down,” but also denouncing the Democrats who come up with “certain immigration policies” (that MAGA castigates as “open borders”) do so from a “place of academic, detached privilege.” (Attachment Seven)

Also from Time on Wednesday, after the rout, another author and Echelon Insights co-founder, Patrick Ruffini... (“Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP”) stated that, at the height of Biden’s troubles with plague, Ukraine, supply chain, acid rain and inflation pain (some of which he deserved, others not) Djonald’s February 2023 visit to working class East Palestine, Ohio—after a train derailment spilled toxic chemicals into the community—helped him get his mojo back after losing the 2020 race (or having it be stolen from him)... after which the training trainwreck of indictments was recycled as a defiance, not lament, of victimization. As for his Republican rivals, Ruffini charged: “Why not just stick with a proven original, one whose primal instincts match perfectly with the Republican electorate’s anti-establishment fervor?”

Younger and minority voters are casting adoring eyes upon Guru Djonald in numbers that Mahara-Ji, Norman Vincent Peale and Jim Jones could only dream of.

Mainstays of the Democratic coalition—Black, Latino, and young voters—now appear to be leaving Biden’s party in droves. “Trump wins voters aged 18-29 in a few polls, despite losing them by 24 points in 2020. He’s reaching 20 percent among Black voters, a polling level without precedent for any Republican nominee in the last 40 years. And he continues to build on the gains he made among Hispanics in 2020.

“Underpinning these trends.” Ruffini posits, “is a class role reversal from where the two parties stood in the 20th century, when Democrats were unambiguously the party of the poor and the working class across racial lines, and Republicans were most often identified with big business and the wealthy.” (Attachment Eight)

Priced a hamburger lately? (Burger King has cancelled its once-occasional BOGO promotions,) Or an expensive college education that won’t earn you enough to pay the rent?

The White House’s strategy seems to be “to hope for good economic news to displace the bad, pivoting in the meantime to non-economic issues like abortion rights and democracy...” but the larger concern for Biden is the perception that his leadership style is “too small, too slow—and yes, too old.”

GUK’s Smith again... after the fact... compared the MAGA saga to “many a film where the protagonist jolts awake from a terrible nightmare, only to realise that he or she didn’t wake up at all: the nightmare continues.” That, for many old line and moderate Republicans, as well as for almost all Democrats (save, perhaps, Joe Manchin and RFK Junior) was the final tally in Des Moines... “an eerie replay of 2016 and all those shocking nights when reality TV star Trump won primaries and eventually the presidency.” (January 16^th, Attachment Nine)

“It was a profoundly depressing night,” Tim Miller, former communications director for Jeb Bush 2016, told the MSNBC network. “Donald Trump attempted a coup three years ago and he is on a glide path to the biggest blowout in a presidential contest in any of our lives.”

Soon enough, hundreds of Trump supporters came to the cavernous hall at the Iowa Events Center, many sporting “Maga” regalia, partaking of beer and popcorn that the organizers provided.

“It’s like a January 6 reunion,” one journalist observed wryly.

Smith observed that the crowd included new stars of the Maga universe: “the Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, Texas congressman Ronny Jackson, British demagogue Nigel Farage and far-right activist Laura Loomer.”

Some may be angling for jobs in a second Trump administration, “one that might make his first cabinet look like a model of professionalism and propriety.” Perhaps a late November or December lesson... in the event... will prognosticate a cabinet derived from Smith’s nightmare movie (unless Hollywood beats us to it).

The ex-president walked onstage to whoops and cheers, accompanied by sons Don Jr and Eric but not wife Melania or daughters Ivanka or Tiffany. @get melania! His victory speech called Old White Joe “the worst president we ever had in the history of our country” … and took a slap at the recently widowed 99 year old Jimmy Carter, who “is happy now because he will go down as being a brilliant president by comparison to Joe Biden.”

Two hours early, a lobstertrap of woke GUK aliens from London (or maybe America, or somewhere else) pulled from the briny deep to weep and grimace contributed their grim takeaways to the evening. (Attachment Ten)

Arwa Mahdawi ferreted out Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, who was in Iowa on Monday night as a surrogate for the Biden-Harris campaign, who may have summed up the night the best. “Tonight’s contest,” Pritzker said, “is simply a question of whether you like your Maga Trump agenda wrapped in the original packaging, or with high heels or lifts in their boots”.

Or perhaps a grenade in their jackboots?

Haley may best Trump in next week’s New Hampshire primary, “but she won’t derail him,” predicted Lloyd Green who ran the numbers and discovered that she nearly matched Trump with college graduates, but only eked out the support of one in eight voters without a four-year degree. “Jesus and Nascar get you the “W” in Trump-centric Iowa.”

Bjaslar Sunkara (a validatated Socialist!) offered a half-hearted tip of the MAGA cap to martyred MAGE Steve Bannon – then reminded the capitalist crooks that “(o)utside of the judicial system there is no elite media or RNC cabal nearly strong enough to defeat him.” A sick old old-style LBJ liberal snoozing as Gaza burns (but also incapable to marshalling serious aid to Israel or Ukraine)... well, we’re going to find out!

Ben Davis (not the monkey pants guy, but part of the data team for Bernie Sanders) wrote that “(m)ost Americans are barely aware there’s even a primary race going on,” no matter how sweet the dreams or nasty the nightmares may be. “Caucus turnout has plummeted since 2016 wrote Big Ben,” (whether weather had something to do with that, or not) and all that transpired was “another rebuke of the wealthy elites in the Republican party.” Not that they’ll suffer greatly unless personally on Djonald’s shit list (beware, Bezos!) – talk of a flat tax is back.

And last of GUK’s squad, Geoffrey Kabaservice (author of “Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party”) pooh poohs any gleamings that a Republican administration would service the debt (below) by any means other than slashing Social Security or Medicare. Given “his brand” of populism. Trump is the only figure in the Republican party who understands that “absolute control over a thing derives from a willingness to utterly destroy it, to paraphrase Frank Herbert’s Dune.” A government shutdown? No problem. A shooting war with Iran, China or Russia? Maybe not.

Another Guardian of the losing Republican left, Alice Herman, credit young and minority voters... a little bit... for the blowout, but concentrated on Trump’s consolidation of support among evangelical Christian voters, a key block in Iowa. “Just over 20% of Trump’s Iowa supporters in 2016 self-reported as evangelicals or born-again Christians; evangelicals (this week) made up 53% of his supporters in 2024 Iowa polling.”

Support for Trump over the likes of Disney destesting Saint Ron or even unhung zero Mike Pence (fer Chrissakes!) among evangelical Christians can be chalked up to “transactional politics” contends Anne Nelson, author of ”Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right.”

According to Nelson, Herman summarizes (Attachment Eleven, Wednesday morning) Djonald UnBornagain... a “philandering and corrupt adulterer twice divorced who is not particularly religious” (Herman), would seem an unlikely candidate for wide support from the devout. “But behind the scenes, leaders in the evangelical movement, including influential members of the Southern Baptist church, struck a deal (Nelson) with Trump in 2016. “In exchange for the support and endorsements of church leaders, Trump would afford evangelicals institutional power in his administration. Through an evangelical advisory board, noted by the WashPost, they would help set social policy and do whatever they could to end the legal right to abortion.

“Leaders in the church, in exchange, crafted a message that would make Trump more palatable to members.”

To evangelicals, “Trump was not a man of God,” said Nelson. “He was an instrument of God, like King Cyrus, the Persian king in the Bible.”

More recently, a Squad of four Post hosties collaborated, not only do evangelicals overlook Trump’s legal peccadilloes, they actively welcome them. Cyrus was, of course, a Babylonian pagan but he also allowed the Jews to return to Israel and, except for a neo-Nazi handful, hard-right Christians are okay with Jews killing Palestinians (even if they’re loath to spend money to help them do so).

On Sunday before the caucuses, GUK’s Squad fanned out across the Hawkeye State and one found a Bible breakfasting retirted advertising salesman living in a “house divided” (his wife was threatening to support Ramaswamy!) whose analogy is more with Djonald David versus the Deep State Goliath. (Attachment Twelve)

Other squadsters sought out Steve Scheffler, president of the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, said that Trump’s description of the Justice Department and other government agencies as being weaponized against him resonates with evangelicals who feel as if the federal government “a lot of times, is not their friend,” and , Paul Figie, a pastor and a Trump caucus captain, said Trump is “ordained by God.” He pointed to how he has seen Trump as being mistreated by the justice system and Democrats, equating the former president to a martyr. He dismissed the viability of other candidates, saying he was convinced that a higher power would put Trump back in office.

“Trump is the guy to be in there, and amen,” Figie said.

A few, however, felt “alienated” because DeSantis’ six week abortion ban was too lenient... presumably opting for prohibition six weeks before conception – but most agreed with a Sunday churchgoer who said he was very disappointed that this country has been so brutal on Donald Trump,” he said. “It’s really brutalized him for the last six to eight years. And I don’t think that that’s warranted.”

The sparse support for DeSantis, after the fact, radiated weakly from the candidate himself, even the handful of evangelical theocrats who have not come to terms with the disparity between Djonald UnSaved’s born again posturing and his reckless, feckless private life bent the knee and kissed the crown as might allow the abortionist’s knife to slice seven, eight even ten weeks after conception.

To secular, Never Trump Republican traitor George Will, however, no barrel of brutalization is too brutal if it can half America’s slide into a “revolting rematch”. Editorializing in the Bezos Bulletin (aka WashPost) on Tuesday afternoon (Attachment Thirteen), the once sober stalwart of the National Review, Georgie took issue with Trump’s “cascading legal distractions”, albeit “driven by progressive prosecutors.” Should it transpire that Trump is inaugurated 371 days after Monday’s Iowa caucuses, Will speculates, “progressives will have accomplished perhaps the largest self-inflicted wound in U.S. political history.”

Leaning into more Democratic circular firing squad rhetoric, Will further opined that the ballot suppression fixation, prompted by President Joe’s “rekarkably silly” statement that on Jan. 6 “we nearly lost America — lost it all.” Oh? A rabble’s four-hour tantrum, which briefly delayed the certification of the 2020 election, nearly did what four years of Confederate military campaigning could not do?

The Congress that, a year after Appomattox, selected the word “insurrection” surely was thinking of such concerted attempts to smash the national regime. “Until there is something comparable, let’s agree that the last person disqualified by Section 3 died at 104 in 1951. His name was — really — Pleasant Crump, the last known surviving Confederate soldier.”

Above God, above numbers, even above Numbers, verse @, declared Time’s Elliott on Tuesday afternoon, what remains of the sad circus of the Republican race will be decided by the winner-take-all rules that “kick in” in South Carolina, and, come Super Tuesday on March 5, “things get even tougher for runners-up. Of the 15 states (plus American Samoa) having nominating contests that day, just two have plausible ways for non-winners to gain a meaningful number of delegates: Alaska and Colorado.” (Attachment Fourteen)

Barring death or defenestration... not even prison can derail the Trump Express.

Once the votes were counted, the Guardian staff... nineteen minutes after the stroke of midnight Tuesday morning... floated a vain hope that sweet Nikki, Saint Ron or some unknown savior might leap into the breach and upend Djonald UnStoppable in a series of takeaways that... granted, even if nomination was a lost cause... Old White Joe might still eke out a November victory.

Because?

Because 1) aside from his court complications, Trump might be too relaxed after heading into November on a wave of weak opponents...

2) that: “issues at the border and the escalating conflict in the Middle East” could “prove an important roadmap for Biden as he looks to gain independent voters...”

3) that: oh hell, who cares about “the stakes for democracy” except vampires... and

4) that: Haley has focused “more on campaigning in New Hampshire in past weeks, giving her an advantage there” (which, with Nikki’s recent forays into Trump dementia, might presumably survive her own debraining and decomposition...

Really?

Well Postie Aaron Blake countered with five more takeaways on the dead primary and doubly dementiated general contest (and remember, this is a Bezos Boy in the Bezos press with much to fear... legally... but also to enjoy in the carnival media sense from four more years) at six minutes to midnight Monday night. (Attachment Sixteen)

And these were...

1) The result is the culmination of a year-long trend in the Republican Party back toward Trump. (But if you’re scrounging really hard for some kind of bad news for Trump, it’s that nearly half of voters voted against someone who amounted to an incumbent, entrance polls showed 3 in 10 voters said he wouldn’t be fit to serve as president if he’s convicted of crimes, and a Fox News analysis showed more than 6 in 10 Haley voters said they wouldn’t support Trump in the general election.)

2) that: The second piece of good news for Trump was who finished second... Nikki having to deal with “DeSantis sticking around and peeling away non-Trump voters in future states,” so as it appeared Monday night.

3) that: fewer than 1 in 10 Trump voters said Biden’s win was legitimate. Trump’s baseless claim pervades the party, but it defines his most devoted base. More than 7 in 10 voters emphasized the economy or immigration, and Trump dominated among them – but what if the economy improves (possible) and Congress cuts and immigration deal (not likely, but... )

4) that: Turnout was down a lot from 2016…

About 110,000 votes have been counted — a total way down from the 187,000 who voted in the 2016 caucuses, which also featured Trump. So... ebbing enthusiasm or the weather? And also...

5) that: Ramaswamy’s exit could bolster Trump a bit since “he was dropping out and endorsing Trump.” De Santis (at that time abandoning New Hampshire to focus on South Carolina? Ramaswamy’s support both nationally and in New Hampshire was lower than it was in Iowa – and that holds true for Saint Ron

A ginormous coast to coast blizzard on November 4^th? What might that portend?

WGBH (Boston) noted that the excitement that usually accompanies the event has been in short supply.

“Everyone is really bored,” Chris Galdieri, a political scientist and New Hampshire primary expert at Saint Anselm College, told GBH News recently.

Another primary expert, Dante Scala of the University of New Hampshire, struck a similarly downbeat note.

“It’s one of the most boring primary cycles I’ve seen, and I’ve been here since 2000,” Scala said.

In other words, Scala argues, it’s basically like two incumbents are running simultaneously.

“That could readily explain the doldrums we’re experiencing,” he said.

Were Biden not disqualified from the New Hampshire Democratic primary ballot (See attachments below) , it might not up the excitement factor all that much, since his best-known opponents, Minnesota U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips and self-help celebrity Marianne Williamson, have been struggling to make the contest competitive. “But it would have given the Democratic contest a bit of luster and gravitas that it currently lacks.” (Attachment Seventeen)

Arnie Arnesen, a former state representative, talk show host and Democratic nominee for governor the says she’s afraid the standoff between New Hampshire and national Democrats will mark a turning point for the worse, after casting a pall that's been hard to lift.

“This has been the most depressing, saddest primary I have ever experienced,” Arnesen said. “There is no passion … Not only do I feel disengaged, but I feel like everyone in New Hampshire is disengaged.”

Add to boredom, the inevitable racial factor as has overtaken and permeated American life, politics and culture over the past few years after a long, long hibernation while people believed prospects were getting better.

Iowa is more racially homogeneous than the rest of the US – more than 85% of Iowans identify as white, and Black people make up only about 4% of the population, compared with the national average of 71% and 12%.

And, less than a week before the caucuses, Haley was caught “trying to be too clever by half in refusing to name slavery as the cause of the nation’s bloodiest conflict, the controversy has had the unintended effect of framing what is facing the country’s voters in 2024.” (Guardian U.K.. Jan. 11^th, Attachment Eighteen)

“This year’s election is, in fact, a continuation of the unresolved question of the civil war era:” the guiltless Brita declaimed, “will the country (the United States, not, of course, Kingdom) continue to move towards fostering a multiracial democracy, or will it aggressively reject its growing diversity and attempt to make America white again?”

Perhaps not unlike PM Rishi Sunak or Meghan Markle, Haley “is a woman of color operating in a political party whose driving forces are white racial resentment and misogyny (and, increasingly, homophobia and transphobia). On the one hand, she is eagerly embraced as a high-profile party symbol who serves as a strong rebuttal to accusations of racism and sexism (“See, we’re not racist and sexist, we have a woman of color as our governor!”). On the other hand, white racial resentment serves as fuel for the Trump movement to the extent that no presidential candidate can hope to win the nomination without bending a knee to the Confederate cause.”

Whereas Governor Haley finally removed the Confederate flag from its statehouse after an unreconstructed rebel killed nine at the Emanuel African church in the Palmetto state, much of the country – and most of the Republican voters – are still fighting the cause of the civil war in ways both literal and figurative. “The active and organized resistance to removing Confederate statues led a mob of white nationalists to march through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 chanting “Jews will not replace us”; one Hitler-loving member of the crowd gunned his car into a group of counterprotesters, killing a woman,” and then-President Trump observed: “There are good people on both sides.”

Stretching back to George Wallace and Strom Thurmond, GUK reached back to losing candidate Chris Christie who paused in his campaign against Trump to ask: “If (Haley) is unwilling to stand up and say that slavery is what caused the civil war … what’s going to happen when she has to stand up against forces in our own party who want to drag this country deeper and deeper into anger and division?”

The WashPost columnist Alexandra Petri slapped a name and a face to those “forces”, editorializing that it is American indifference as causes us to wind up with Trump... a threat to our democracy, something he keeps excitedly shouting at rallies and having his followers intimate in menacing voicemails to the judges evaluating cases against him.” (Jan. 12, Attachment Nineteen) Thus, once the votes were counted in Iowa, the reality sunk in that the media (not to mention the voters, the donors and Democrats) would have to disabuse themselves of the denial of “pretending that there is a legitimate primary contest in the Republican party. There isn’t.” (Guardian U.K., Jan. 16^th, Attachment Twenty)

In retrospect, wrote GUK’s Moira Donegan, “the notion that the 2024 Republican nominee would ever have been anyone other than Donald Trump was always a bit absurd.” His marquee antagonist, Saint Ron, “burned tens of millions of dollars in donor cash, like a dumped prom queen going through tissues” and, in visiting 99 counties (and losing 98 to Trump and the other to Haley) managed to be charmless and off-putting in every corner of the state.

Donegan doesn’t hold out much hope for Haley either – assessing the prospect of The Donald seeking a woman VP... maybe even a woman of color... to counter to counter the political liability of Dobbs (or Kamala Harris).

“Haley’s campaign for president, such as it is, has been little more than a long audition for this role, one embarked upon with an eager solicitousness that seems almost canine,” Donegan reflected. Then again, the rematch gamers are going to be a couple of old men – both of whom, after The Donald mistook Nikki for Nancy Pelosi, probably losing their minds.

Beyond tail-wagging and ring-kissing to rise to a potential Vice Presidency, Haley’s real last chance is in the court system... one of them (the documents, Georgia electioneering, insurrection, Carroll or Stormy).

“Donald Trump’s most dangerous race is not with other Republican candidates, but against the law,” determined another GUKster, Sidney Blumenthal (Jan. 17, Attachment Twenty One). That is why his ever-revolving roster of lawyers concentrate on delaying, delaying, delaying – giving him space to depict himself as a martyr, “taking the slings and arrows for his believers, who are his hope to rescue him.

“So long as the band plays, he doesn’t have to face the music. Once it stops, his primary voters are replaced by a jury.” And each of his civil or criminal cases carry a unique thicket of problems into which the candidate, and campaign, might vanish.

Both Haley and DeSantis have denounced the (mostly Democratic) prosecutorial persecutors – Ronno dredging up Hunter and Hillary, Haley denouncing “vendetta politics”.

Trump could not have paid for better ringers.

With Trump, the MAGA cult believes that the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers imprisoned for their violent assault on the Capitol are “hostages” who deserve pardons, that President Joe “stole” the 2020 race and that Djonald will only rule as dictator “on the first day.”

Blumenthal has also wholly bought into the Trump-as-Cyrus legendermain previously noted (Attachment Eleven) by conflating his pressing legal troubles with the imaginary oppression of Christians. “Under crooked Joe Biden, Christians and Americans of faith are being persecuted and government has been weaponized against religion like never before. And also presidents like never before,” Trump said on 19 December.

Blumenthal then compared MAGA to the “true believers” who, according to Eisenhower favorite Eric Hoffer, embraced Naziism and Communism during the Cold War.

Ike, who had led the armies that defeated Hitler (but made a momentous gaffe of his own in selecting Dick Nixon as Veep), wrote a letter in 1958 warning against authoritarianism. Citing Hoffer, he stated that “dictatorial systems make one contribution to their people which leads them to tend to support such systems – freedom from the necessity of informing themselves and making up their own minds concerning these tremendous complex and difficult questions.”

Saint Ron, at least, got one of Hoffer’s aphorisms right... reiterating that: “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

Which brings us to the puzzling and quasi-dictatorial adventures of liberals in Colorado and Maine (so far... more appear to be on the way) in pretzaling the Fourteenth Amendment’s prohibition against Insurrectionists (as George Will puts it, like that last Confederate soldier who died in 1951) so as to allow Nikki... or somebody... to capture the Republican nomination despite her discrepancy with the voters.

Writing that the US constitution is not a suicide pact as the New York Times did two decades ago, Steven Greenhouse penned a gaseous appeal to treason for, of course, GUK, pleading with the Supreme Court justices as will ultimately decide the matter, sooner or later, to institute the privilege of state courts, politicians or partisan perpetrators to meddle in Federal elections according to their personal prejudices.

It’s not difficult to understand the despair washing over the Left as Trump not only secures the Republican nomination but now enjoys a healthy lead over President Joe for November 2024.

“An insurrectionist candidate who stands a good chance of winning the presidency in November could drive a stake through the heart of America’s democracy,” Greenhouse argues.

What revolted Republican Will called a “tantrum” that Greenhouse elevates to a “coup” was seen by Colorado as a cause for prohibition inasmuch as a House select committee found that the outgoing President also “refused repeated requests over a multiple-hour period that he instruct his violent supporters to disperse and leave the Capitol.”

The issue of whether the sort of criminality as warrants the sanction of a ban from holding office... such as was imposed on Confederates... will, of course, be catnip to the legal profession. But it will also, if upheld, encourage all partisans to weaponize the law to eliminate (or at least entangle) their enemies in the ropes of jurisprudential zealotry.

Trump has threatened to be a dictator on day one, and someone who threatens to be dictator on his first day in office might not stop there. He claimed that he was cheated out of the 2016 Iowa caucuses by Ted Cruz... thus, the reasoning goes... should whining be elevated to a Federal crime?

“Those who warn that it would be anti-democratic to kick Trump off the ballot,” Greenhouse concludes, “should realize that Trump’s election as president would be a far graver and longer-lasting risk to our democracy.”

But doesn’t “democracy” imply that, should a majority of the people want some other form of governance... a King, a dictator, a High Priest?... should their rights be squelched?

That the high drama and legal complications of ballot access can be downsized to trivia, even comedy, is nowhere more apparent than in the New Hampshire primary tomorrow night – where a state v. Federal scuffle has resulted in the President being kicked off the primary ballot... leaving the Granite State Democrats facing a choice between Dean Phillips or Marianne Williamson or another of the twenty one@ names as did qualify, including the Don Jones favorite for any office at any election crusader for dental health, Vermin Supreme. (USA Today, Attachment Twenty Three)

Maybe somebody other than Old White Joe might prevail. A new super PAC backed by Silicon Valley insiders is mobilizing to spread Phillips’s ideas in an unusual way. This week, according to the WashPost, they launched Dean.Bot after weighing the implications of using a sophisticated AI tool that can chat like a real person — one of the first known uses of artificial intelligence in a political campaign.

This version of the chatbot replicating Rep. Dean Phillips’s voice was powered by the large language model behind ChatGPT, and other open-source software. The techies behind the bot are getting help from activist hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, who has described the fight as protecting Democrats from nominating a candidate who can’t win. The PAC has already raised $4 million to target New Hampshire voters with short confessional-style videos — targeted social media ads featuring Phillips and supporters making his case.

(Voters will be allowed to write Biden’s name in as a protest of the strange law... they are also free to write in any remarks that they may wish to make concerning anything and everything about the 2024 election)

On the sidelines... grumbling but impotent... sit state and local Democrats cognizant of Biden’s increasing incognizance and, at the other end of the log floating rapidly through the rapids towards the waterfall, Republican down-balloteers and strategists who worry that Trump’s lead over President Joe will evaporate over time and trials between now and November.

Also adrift are the old-line million and billionaire conservatives, now having to wonder whether to throw any more of their dark money at losers Nikki and Ron, to swallow their pride and their brainstems and donate it to the nominee, or to just go home, buy another boat or island and hope that an addled and aged incumbent will forget their disloyalty as an apparently equally aged and addled Trump certainly wouldn’t. (Maybe he’ll confuse the Koch family with Nancy Pelosi or, perhaps, a bunch of Koch-suckers for having plowed in their not-so-hard earned lucre into the doomed De Santos campaign?

President Joe Biden isn’t worried – at least according to Politico...

“Well, I don’t think Iowa means anything,” Biden told reporters Thursday, when asked about the implications of Trump’s victory for his own reelection efforts.

“The president got 50-some-thousand votes, the lowest number of votes anybody who’s won got. You know, this idea that he’s going to run away, he can think anyway he wants, let him make that judgment,” Biden said. (Attachment Twenty Four)

And there appears to be one squirrelly rat that Democrats won’t have to rant about... at least for now: the economy. President Biden signed a stopgap measure to fund the government through the beginning of March into law on Friday, the White House said, avoiding a partial shutdown as lawmakers continued working to pass a broader spending deal.  At once, reported the e-con-mystics at GUK, the S&P 500 hit a new record high of 4,838, as US consumer confidence rose, inflation concerns eased and the University of Michigan’s monthly consumer sentiment index rose 9.1 points to 78.8, the biggest monthly advance since 2005 and far exceeding expectations.

And now that Joe has affixed his John Hancock on the can-kick postponement of government default and shutdown, the Dow, today, broke through the 38,000 ceiling – eliciting applause from investors and IRA holders.

The turnaround came as a blow to Team Trump, which had apparently been hoping that the gloom and doom of 2023 would escalate – washing Biden, his economic advisers and the Democratic party away down the flumes.

MAGA mega-high hopes crested a week ago Thursday when CNBC reported that consumer prices had risen 0.3% in December, higher than expected and pushing the annual rate back to 3.4% with all the Fed Reserve fear that inflation has engendered since the start of the plague.

“Much of the increase came due to rising shelter costs. The category rose 0.5% for the month and accounted for more than half the core CPI increase,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“These are not bad numbers, but they do show that disinflation progress is still slow and unlikely to be a straight line down to 2%,” said Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management. “Certainly, as long as shelter inflation remains stubbornly elevated, the Fed will keep pushing back at the idea of imminent rate cuts.” (Attachment Twenty Five)

The consumer price index (CPI) rise of 0.3% last month came after “nudging up (only) 0.1% in November, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics said. The cost of shelter, which includes rents, hotel and motel stays as well as school housing, accounted for more than half of the increase in the CPI. Reuters concurred with CNBC. (Attachment Twenty Six)

And after the first week of the new year, fiscal media expressed pessimism that a catastrophic government shutdown could be avoided. While Congress announced an outline of an agreement, The Economist warned “If that sounds too good to be true, it’s because it is.” Although the latest news from House and Senate leadership was a step forward, “serious disagreements persist and Congress remains far from the finish line” – in this case, last Friday. (Jan. 8^th, Attachment Twenty Seven).

Time’s version of a “deal” contained a statement by President Joe that the agreement “moves us one step closer to preventing a needless government shutdown and protecting important national priorities.

“It reflects the funding levels that I negotiated with both parties and signed into law last spring," Biden added. “It rejects deep cuts to programs hardworking families count on, and provides a path to passing full-year funding bills that deliver for the American people and are free of any extreme policies.” (Attachment Twenty Eight)

“It’s a good deal for Democrats and the country,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told colleagues in a briefing call.

But, apparently not for Republicans. “It’s even worse than we thought,” the House Freedom Caucus said of the agreement in a tweet posted on X. “This is total failure.”

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., tweeted that he was encouraged that leaders identified a “path toward completing” the spending bills. It was a cautious recognition that some obstacles could lie ahead.

“America faces serious national security challenges, and Congress must act quickly to deliver the full-year resources this moment requires,” McConnell said.

By a week ago Thursday, the deal was collapsing like those of so many Trump challengers. Meetings on Thursday between U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and conservative lawmakers led to speculation he was about to walk away from the bipartisan spending agreement he signed off on just this past weekend — a decision that would greatly increase the chances of a partial government shutdown next week.

“Let me tell you what’s going on,” Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, told reporters outside his office. “We’re having thoughtful conversations about funding options and priorities. We had a cross section of members in today. We’ll continue having cross sections of members in. And while those conversations are going on, I’ve made no commitments. So if you hear otherwise it’s just simply not true. We’re looking forward to those conversations.” (The Montanan, Attachment Twenty Nine)

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that senators would continue negotiations with the House based on the agreement for total spending levels that he and Johnson announced Sunday.

“Look, we have a topline agreement,” Schumer said. “Everybody knows to get anything done it has to be bipartisan. So we’re going to continue to work to pass a CR and avoid a shutdown.”

Budget dissenters, many of whom are members of the far-right Freedom Caucus, rarely, if ever, vote for spending bills. And it’s unlikely that they would vote for any full-year bills that can garner support in the Democratic Senate, let alone President Joe Biden’s signature.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a Thursday press briefing that House Republicans “need to keep their word,” on the spending deal agreement that Johnson made with Democrats over the weekend.

“We cannot have a shutdown,” she said. “That is their basic duty, to keep the government open.”

Most Republicans concur and supported Johnson once he renounced his pledge not to can-kick again, saying he is doing the best he can, but it took only eight Republicans to oust McCarthy — along with 208 Democrats.

A similar revolt from just a handful of Republicans would leave Johnson vulnerable as well.

The debate over this year's spending bills is separate from the negotiations that are taking place to secure additional funding for Israel and Ukraine. That funding is a top priority of the Biden administration, but Republicans are insisting that such a package contain tougher immigration restrictions.

One of that handful, Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio, walked out of another fruitless meeting, saying he'd had enough.

"I'm not going to sit there and listen to that drivel, because he has no plans to do anything but surrender," Davidson said.

Thirteen Republicans refused to support a routine procedural vote setting the stage for considering three GOP-led bills. A similar revolt occurred in June when, for the first time in some 20 years, such a routine vote was defeated, essentially grinding the House to a halt. (Spectrum News, Attachment Thirty)

"We needed to send a message that what's going on with this announced agreement is unacceptable," said Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., the chairman of House Freedom Caucus, made up many of the House's most conservative lawmakers.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told Fox News he's not going to say what would trigger a motion by him to seek Johnson's removal, but "we've got to do better than this." Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said "a lot of people are talking about" a motion to vacate Johnson from the speakership. But the Tennessee Republican who helped oust McCarthy said he's personally not there "yet."

Facing reporters afterward, Johnson said he was not concerned about losing his job and called the spending deal a "down payment on restoring us to fiscal sanity in this country."

"Look, leadership is tough. You take a lot of criticism, but remember, I am a hardline conservative. That's what they used to call me," Johnson said. "I come from that camp." Camp Runamok?

Many Republicans doubt that colleagues would want to put the House through more of the chaos that erupted when McCarthy was ousted. It took nearly three tense weeks to land on Johnson as a replacement for McCarthy. Johnson has been on the job for less than three months, having just recently filled out his staff.

"The reality is nobody wants to go through another speaker's campaign," said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla. "You can take somebody down once and say you're killing a tyrant. When you do it twice, you become an assassin.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Thursday, Jan. 11^th that it was “crystal clear” that Congress wouldn’t be able to pass the regular spending bills by the Jan. 19 deadline, and he announced that senators would instead vote next week on a short-term funding measure to avoid a government shutdown (The Hill, Attachment Thirty One).

“The most immediate need in the calendar is avoiding a government shutdown and fully funding the government for fiscal year 2024,” he said, warning: “A shutdown is looming over us.”

Members of the Freedom Caucus and other conservatives derailed unrelated legislation on the House floor in a protest vote Wednesday. On Thursday, those same members allowed the leadership’s floor agenda to get back on track — but only after they buttonholed Johnson to try to get him to renegotiate the bipartisan spending deal to seek deeper cuts, according to The Hill.

“That’s pretty nasty. It’s ridiculous,” Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) said, noting that the same members have continually complained about spending deals over the past year. “At some point when you have people complain all the time, it’s like crying wolf. It just lacks credibility anymore.”

As the Jan. 19^th deadline approached, members expressed growing doubt on whether a shutdown could be avoided without another continuing resolution, or CR.

“Time is so compressed and the deadline so short that I’m afraid we’re looking at another short-term continuing resolution,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, in an interview Wednesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Speaker Johnson said he was planning to call former President Donald Trump on Wednesday to “talk him through the details” of the budget negotiations. (CNBC, Attachment Thirty Two)

“Another CR would be a tough pill to swallow for Johnson, who (had) pledged to break the pattern of funding the government via short spurts instead of a cohesive budget.

“I think operating by CRs and shutting down the government is a dereliction of duty. I don’t think it’s the way it’s supposed to be done,” Johnson had said at a Wall Street Journal conference in December.

The conservative New York Post reported that some radical Republicans were “seething” at Johnson for colluding with Democrats. (Attachment Thirty Three)

The howling from Johnson’s right flank became reminiscent of the spending flap that doomed his predecessor as speaker, former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) three months ago.

“I am a NO to the Johnson Schumer budget deal,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) posted on X Sunday night.

“If this is the best Republicans can do, there’s no hope of ever balancing our budget or securing the border,” lamented Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC).

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, during a Monday interview with CNN's Kaitlan Collins, floated the possibility of pushing Johnson out of the role, observing that colleagues "are really frustrated” with the House Speaker.

“Republicans agreeing to spending levels $69 billion higher than last summer’s debt ceiling ‘deal’, with no significant policy wins is nothing but another loss for America. At some point, having the House majority has to matter. Stop funding this spending with an open border!” added newly minted Freedom Caucus chairman Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.).

Roy, who is also the chair of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus that partly drove out former Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., also mentioned “real conversations this week about what [House Republicans] need to do going forward,” saying that the situation was “[not] good.”

Post fiscal reporter Ariel Zilber likened the country’s soaring national debt — which recently surpassed a record-high $34 trillion — to a “boiling frog” for the economy and Wall Street investors, citing Michael Cembalest, JPMorgan’s market and investment strategist, who predicted dire consequences for the economy if the Biden administration doesn’t start tackling the debt.

Cembalest wrote in a newsletter published last week by JPMorgan that the country cannot sustain higher deficits and ballooning net interest payments, which are soon expected to exceed the federal government’s total revenue by early next decade.

“The problem for the US is the starting point; every round of fiscal stimulus brings the US one step closer to debt unsustainability,” Cembalest wrote in the newsletter titled “Pillow Talk.”

“However, we’re accustomed to deteriorating US government finances with limited consequences for investors, and one day that may change (the boiling frog analogy).”

The “boiling frog” concept comes from a metaphor used to describe a situation whereby an undesirable set of circumstances is tolerated for an extended period of time — such as a frog that is thrown into water that is gradually heated.

Once the circumstances become too dire — and the water is heated to a boil — it is too late for the frog to act and it is cooked alive.

Cembalest predicted that by early next decade, “all Federal government revenues will be consumed by entitlement payments... Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, unemployment insurance and other aspects of the federal welfare safety net... and interest on the Federal debt.”

Cembalest wrote that before the next decade he anticipates that “a combination of market pressure and rating agency downgrades” will “force the US to make substantial changes to taxes and entitlements.”

In November, Moody’s lowered the US government’s credit ratings outlook from “stable” to “negative.”

Last summer, Fitch Rating downgraded the federal government’s long-term credit rating from AAA to AA+.

As the New Republic noted, GOP dissatisfaction with Johnson seems to be emanating from his perceived cooperation with President Joe Biden and House Democrats on spending bills and related legislation according to the liberal Salon. “Johnson faced sharp resistance after striking a $1.66 trillion deal with Democratic Majority leader Chuck Schumer, N.Y., over the (previous) weekend.”

Following news of Johnson's potential ousting came a boiled frog chef’s surprise: far-right GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Ga., came to his defense! Greene referred to Roy's suggestion of booting Johnson as "the dumbest thing that could happen," and went on to cite the political mayhem that ensued after Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., led a coup and introduced the same motion against McCarthy. 

“I mean, look at the results we have now. We haven’t passed any more appropriation bills since they threw out Kevin McCarthy," Greene said. "We have expelled a Republican member of Congress, we’re reducing our numbers. I’m kind of sick of the chaos,” she said, echoing Nikki Haley and not her beloved Trump. “I came here to be serious about solving problems, not to produce clickbait." (Attachment Thirty Five)

Moderate Republicans have also warned against the plan.

“If they try it, they are fucking idiots,” Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., told Semafor.

“I kind of doubt anyone wants to go through that three-ring circus again,” another unnamed House Republican told the outlet. 

“It would be the dumbest move ever and the counter-reaction from the 95% of our conference who want to govern and who know the realities of our Constitutional system and divided government would be fierce,” added Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb. “We just have a few people who think they’re the only people who count and ignore that we have divided government. They’d be threatening Moses taking them to the Promised Land.”

The next few years will include several predictable fiscal policy deadlines that will force congressional action. Many of the deadlines could bring additional costs if Congress acts irresponsibly, or they could present an opportunity for Congress to reduce deficits.

Congress may be compelled to act on each of these dates or enact short-term extensions or policy modifications to move the deadlines to buy time for action. 

CFRB’s list of deadlines includes quarterly levies for Medicaid, Medicare physician payments and yearly obligations for spending related to agriculture, education and numerous other ventures of greater or lesser necessity. Further in the future, the Highway Trust Fund expires in 2028, Medicare runs out of money in 2031 and Social Security in 2035. (Attachment Thirty Six) They also include a list of Supreme Court cases that might potentially affect these deadlines, for longer or shorter.

On January 16^th, Federal News Network reporter Tom Temin interviewed WTOP Capitol Hill correspondent Mitch Miller who sang a sour song of debt and bankruptcy unless Congress and President Joe could come to a meeting of minds by Friday midnight on the can-kick to extend spending through March 1st and March 8th. (Miller pointed out that the state of the Union address is March 7^th – Attachment Thirty Seven).

Miller explored “a couple of reasons” why the process suddenly turned perilous... “One, that House speaker Mike Johnson is new in this position and still trying to get his footing,” and secondly, “the outsized influence of the House Freedom Caucus. Since the Republican majority is so small, Johnson has, like former Speaker Kevin McCarthy before him, tried to listen to all members of this unwieldy GOP conference. So last week he met with various Republican groups, including hard line conservatives who he’s been close to before becoming speaker. They essentially said, you haven’t been tough enough with the Senate on issues like the southern border and pushing for deeper spending cuts. And after their meeting last week, some thought they had caused the speaker to open up the possibility of reopening negotiations on that top line budget number. But he later indicated he was just “keeping an open mind” (which some viewed as a stab in the back of the head) and also met with more moderate members of the conference.”

So he’s going to, again, rely on Democrats, as I mentioned, Miller said, to avoid a shutdown, “while at the same time looking over his shoulder, hoping no conservative makes a motion to vacate the chair, as they did with Kevin McCarthy, who went from being speaker of the House to no longer being in Congress.

Tom Temin You know, and if they remove Johnson and then he leaves the Congress, I mean, the Republican majority is slipping away like sands through an hourglass here.

Mitchell Miller It really is. I mean, right now we’re down to a two-vote majority, in part because the former House speaker, who would have thought that actually left Congress? And then you had George Santos being kicked out of Congress. So, you start losing more, and there are retirements on the way as well. They literally are down to, as you say, the sands in the hourglass, 1 or 2 or even no votes if things continue to move the way they are.

Temin further questioned Miller on Lloyd Austin’s concealment of his health issues, the chances of cuts to the Pentagon (at a time when Russia, China, Iran... even NoKo!... are getting goofy) and, of course, Hunter Biden.

As to the numbers, ABC had reported... before the original deal collapsed... that top-line spending for fiscal year 2024 would be capped at $1.59 trillion, the amount originally agreed to by President Joe Biden and then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy during negotiations over the government's debt limit last year.

The framework proposed keeping in place the $886 billion agreed to for defense funding in the 2024 fiscal year while also maintaining the $704 billion in non-defense spending that Democrats insisted upon during the debt limit negotiations. (Attachment Thirty Eight) Agreeing on those figures allowed lawmakers in the House and Senate to begin working on the text of individual spending bills – “an ongoing point of contention on Capitol Hill, particularly among House Republicans.”

Democrats didn’t exactly help their cause when Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries claimed in a joint statement on Sunday that the agreement was a win for Democrats in that it keeps intact Biden's negotiations while “side-stepping” Republican objection. Annoyed by this arrogance, the radical right shook their bottle of poison pills.

“What this tells us,” scoffed the libertarian/conservative Cato Institute, is that “neither Democrats nor Republicans are ready to face the US government’s rapidly deteriorating fiscal situation.” The deal continued business as usual, “relying on budget gimmicks and emergency designations to pad topline spending, while falling short of cutting spending back to pre‐pandemic levels or holding the line on limiting spending to no more than fiscal year 2023’s levels,” Cato scoffed.

“This is a deal to avoid a government shutdown during an election year, but not much else.”

This deal still has a long way to go before being enacted, Cato warned. (Attachment Thirty Nine) “Still up for discussion are GOP border measures, Biden’s emergency supplemental request to support Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and more, as well as policy riders, and whether Congress will try to address the broader fiscal challenge by attaching a congressional commission bill to smooth final passage.

After Johnson announced he wasn’t backing out of the $1.66 trillion Biden/McCarthy deal, despite calls from ultraconservative lawmakers to make deeper spending cuts. Some of those right-wing lawmakers last week mulled introducing a motion to vacate, which would tee up a vote to oust Johnson, though others indicated the lawmakers weren't willing to take that step yet.  Instead, the ultraconservative lawmakers conspired to “tank a vote on the temporary measure, known as a continuing resolution (can-kick), which meant that all officials and federal agencies not deemed “essential” would have to stop their work and close their doors. If the government did shut down, thousands of federal employees would be furloughed. 

("Essential" federal workers, which range from air traffic controllers to emergency personnel in national parks, would work without pay, but they would receive back pay once the shutdown ended. Some subcontractors for the government could be out of work and would not receive back pay. (USA Today, Attachment Forty)

A shutdown would also have significant impacts on Americans who don't work for the federal government.
“For example, some food assistance benefits (would) be delayed, and certain food safety inspections (would) be put on pause.” 

The prospect of toxic baby food, empty shelves and empty pockets leading to Gaza-ish food riots undoubtedly influenced a significant number of “moderate” Reepublicans to defer their dream of a government shutdown, even though Candidate Trump pressed for Apocalypse.

A New York Times fact check on the costs, necessity and risks of slashing Social Security and Medicare focused on the positions of politicians as regards reining in these budget-busters. (Attachment Forty One)

During his time in office, Mr. Trump did propose some cuts to Medicare — though experts said the cost reductions would not have significantly affected benefits — and to Social Security’s programs for people with disabilities. They were not enacted by Congress.

Like other candidates, including Mr. Biden, Djonald InConsistent has shifted his positions over time. “In a 2000 book, Mr. Trump suggested, for people under 40, raising the age for receiving full Social Security retirement benefits to 70. Before that, he said he was open to the idea of privatizing the program, even if he did not like the concept. He no longer advances those positions.”

As far as costs went, Trump told Sean Hannity last December that the government could avert any Social Security changes by expanding drilling in the United States, but unnamed experts said that is not feasible.

As far as Nikki Haley went, she’s been on the record as telling Bloomberg that: “The way we deal with it is, we don’t touch anyone’s retirement or anyone who’s been promised in, but we go to people, like my kids in their 20s, when they’re coming into the system, and we say, ‘The rules have changed.’ We change retirement age to reflect life expectancy.”

Ms. Haley did not specify what the new retirement age should be. “What we do know is 65 is way too low, and we need to increase that,” she said when pressed. “We need to do it according to life expectancy.”

Fact checking the deal between Johnson and Schumer revealed a bit of the old sleight-of-hand according to Axios (Attachment Forty Two)

In messaging guidance sent to House Republicans on Sunday, Johnson's office said topline government spending would be set at $1.59 trillion for fiscal year 2024 – the level set in last year's bipartisan debt ceiling deal.

• $886 billion of that in Pentagon funding set out in defense spending bill President Biden signed in December.

• That left $704 billion in non-defense spending, Johnson's office said, touting "the first cut in non-VA, non-defense appropriations in years."

The intrigue, Axios reported, is that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that the non-discretionary spending figure “was actually $772.7 billion, which would bring the total spending topline to $1.66 trillion.”

• Schumer's office pointed to an additional $69 billion as part of a "side agreement" between former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Biden in the debt ceiling deal to account for the discrepancy.

• Johnson's messaging guidance said Sunday's deal included $10 billion in "additional cuts" to the IRS. Schumer's office said that was part of $20 billion in cuts that were already agreed to, but which would happen "this year rather than over the course of two years."

• Both sides also said the new deal also “claws back” $6.1 billion in unspent COVID aid funds.

Side deals, fine print and claws settled, the Washington Santas slid down the Capitol chimney to hang their shutdown stocking on the mantelpiece and gobble up milk and cookies in the form of “more time to complete work on the 12 appropriations bills as noted above. Congressional leaders announced a deal on top-line spending numbers last weekend, but appropriators need more time to hash out particulars in each funding bill.”

The announcement of the two-step continuing resolution enraged conservative House Republicans, who are traditionally opposed to stopgap legislation and have been averse to GOP leadership cutting deals with Democrats and remained adamant that “border security be included in any government funding effort, pinning the politically prickly topic to the already convoluted shutdown showdown.”

Those dynamics, Axios noted, meant that the deal would require significant Democratic support to get over the finish line in the House. (The Hill, Attachment Forty Three)

The backing of another two-step continuing resolution, meanwhile, marks a reversal of sorts for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who vowed in November not to put another stopgap bill on the floor.

“The House Republican Conference is committed to never being in this situation again. I’m done with short-term [continuing resolutions],” he said during a press conference shortly before the House approved a two-step stopgap bill.

The snowstorms pummeling much of the country -- including D.C. -- would keep the majority of the federal government at home Tuesday, but not the Senate, whose members are expected to brave the weather to cast the first in a series of votes that they hope will stave off a partial government shutdown at week's end. (ABC News, Attachment Forty Four)

Though travel delays prevented many senators from participating in Tuesday night's vote, time was not a luxury this Congress has as the shutdown loomed-- meaning many would have to lace up their snow boots. The House, however, declared a Snow Day as Speaker Johnson prepared to draft and present his snow job to the membership... touting the $6 billion clawback of COVID funds and “expediting a $10 billion cut in funding to the IRS in the top-line spending deal” which the House Freedom Caucus took only moments to make their objection known.

"This is what surrender looks like," they posted on X moments after Schumer and Johnson announced their intent to hold votes to move the funding deadlines.

The resistance failed.

On Thursday... “the tenth hour” according to mediots, the Senate voted first to pass the now-“laddered” measure by a tally of 77 to 18 with five solons, including 90 year old Chuck Grassley, the infected gentleman from Iowa. The House passed the bill later in the day, 314 to 108.

The short-term funding extension sets up two new funding deadlines on March 1 and March 8. The stopgap measure will provide more time for full-year appropriations bills to be negotiated and passed.

“But major challenges still (lie) ahead,” CNN warned . (Attachment Forty Five, January 18^th, 5”02 PM EST) Lawmakers must now attempt to pass a series of full-year spending bills before new March deadlines – a painstaking process with a wide array of potential landmines as the two parties fight for competing policy priorities.”

One minute later, Reuters (Attachment Forty Six) added that two House Democrats had registered their opposition. Both chambers had accelerated their votes because of a forecast Friday snowstorm that could have snarled lawmakers' departure for the weekend.

Schumer and his House Republican counterpart, Mike Johnson, early this month agreed to an alleged $1.59 trillion discretionary spending level for the year that ends on Sept. 30. But in a sign of how bitterly the Congress is divided, the two parties “now disagree on that number, with Democrats saying the actual amount agreed to is $1.66 trillion.”

The seventy billion dollr difference may look like a hefty sum to Don Jones (or even the Don Trumps Senior nnd/or Junior) but “a $34.4 trillion national debt that is rapidly escalating and has prompted worries in part because of the heavy interest payments now being borne by the Treasury Department.”

The New York Post sought out Freedom Caucus insurrectionists like Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who blasted the bill’s negotiators on the House floor ahead of the vote for entertaining “side deals” on appropriations — and whined that lawmakers were more concerned about leaving town before the snowstorm than dealing with the nation’s $34 trillion debt.

But hey... the temperature moderated, but only enough to coat the streets with black ice as could have resulted in car crashes that could have increased or diminished the slim partisan majorities in both Houses.

The Freedom Caucus also denounced the “Johnson-Schumer CR” in a position statement prior to the vote for not upholding Republicans’ commitment to “secure the border.”

Good Grief!@20

“We had 14 Democrats join all Republicans in voting yesterday to denounce and end Biden’s open border policies,” thundered Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), who chairs the Freedom Caucus after the budget storm but before the celestial storm. (Attachment Forty Seven)

“Now, it’s time to require border security to fund this government. Shut down the border or shut down the government!” he threatened.

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), who opposed the bill, introduced a last-minute motion to return it to the Appropriations Committee and instead prepare a full-year government funding measure until the end of the fiscal year, but it was voted down 82-13.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), another “no” vote, also failed to pass an amendment to the legislation banning US funding to the West Bank and Gaza by a vote of 44-50.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) supported the bill — but 18 other Republicans voted against it – perhaps thinking that it might be considered... you know... a little bit Hamasturbatory.

The Post also noted that the White House and the Senate were desperate to raise the debt limit, “and so they agreed to spending cuts and spending caps,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) pointed out, “so they reneged on that deal,” referring to the new topline proposal from Schumer and Johnson.

“Defense hawks continue to run the swamp. That’s what killed Kevin. That’s what’s killing Mike,” said a somewhat bloodthirsty Rep. Chip who hasn’t ruled out vacating the speakership.

“This isn’t the end of this fight — we weren’t given the majority to spend higher than [House Speaker emerita] Nancy Pelosi.”

Former Freedom Caucus chairman Scott Perry (R-Pa.) echoed the criticism in a video statement posted to X, calling out “certain folks” for “putting special interests above the Nation.”

“This doesn’t do anything to fix the border; this doesn’t do anything to slow down the cost of living increases that you’re dealing with every day,” Perry said. “I won’t be voting for this, I guarantee you that, if this is the final result.”

But it was.

On Friday, CBS reported that President Joe signed the stopgap measure to fund the government through the beginning of March into law on Friday, the White House said, avoiding a partial shutdown as lawmakers continue working to pass a broader spending deal. (Attachment Forty Eight)

The House and Senate approved the continuing resolution on Thursday in bipartisan votes, sending it to Mr. Biden's desk. Without the measure, a partial shutdown would have begun Saturday morning.

The legislation extends current-level funding for some federal agencies through March 1, and others through March 8. The government has been operating under a short-term funding extension passed in November, and this was the third stopgap measure Congress has passed since September. 

The continuing resolution passed by the House and the Senate this week extends funding through March 1 for four of the 12 appropriation bills that make up the federal budget, and through March 8 for the other eight. (Investopedia, Attachment Forty Nine)

Some Republicans had threatened to block the spending bills if Democrats didn't agree to steep cuts to social programs, but the spending deal made a shutdown, and the damage to the economy it would cause, more remote.

Lawmakers have been negotiating compromise spending bills, including a measure that would let more lower-income families benefit from the Child Tax Credit. As with past spending bills, they include tax cuts favored by Republicans and social spending increases favored by Democrats, leaving the $34 trillion national debt on an upward trajectory.

Off through the snow, then, they ran. And, over the weekend, Republican Presidential candidate Ron DeSantis ran too... back to Florida, leaving Donald and Nikki the only 2024 Presidential aspirants.

	Our Lesson: January Fifteenth through Twenty First, 2024
Monday, January 15, 2024 Dow: Closed	It’s MLK Day. And Iowa Caucus Day. And the record cold in Iowa will make some candidacies, break others... but whose? Enthusiasm will rule with wind chills at -32°. Trump tells his cult “even if you vote, then pass away it’s worth it,” MAGA saysthe zombies will even walk over broken glass. Or ice. A bitter DeSantis says “you can be the lousiest Republican but if you kiss the ring,” Trump will bless you. It’s a troublesome day for Popes and Kings. Pope Frank chose not to update his three year old homily to MLK, saying only that he hoped that Hell was empty. In Denmark, King Freddy the Tenth ascends to the Little Mermaid throne while King Charles is being treated for prostate disease (not cancer?) and Princess Kate for stomach disease (not cancer?). Sick DefSec returns from hospital and will work from home. His work as the woes and the wars continue... Ukraine says Russia will conquer them without US aid, Republicans in Congress say, do what we say or it will happen. Israel continues its anti-Hamas, anti-Palestinian shelling and bombing and shootings, the United States attacks Houthi rebels attacking Red Sea shipping. “Succession” tops Emmys, followed by “The Bear” and “Beef”. See list of winners here.
Tuesday, January 16, 2024 Dow: 37,361.12	Djonald UnContested sweeps Iowa with between 51 and 53% of the vote, according to whom you believe. DeSantis stays alive with a narrow lead over Haley but, like Matty G says, “it’s pver. Dude.” The rematch nobody wants is on, not even prison can stop it... only if one of those old men dies. (See more above) Despite Old White Joe’s verbiage, the wars are escalating. Iranian-backed forces attack America in Yemen and also in Syria, Iraq and Israel escalates to Lebanon. Most dangerous of all, Iran and Pakistan start another war as could go nuclear with India and China watching closely. Nuclear depopulation might not be so bad, however, because AI experts say their genius will render 40% of the world’s workforce redundant... i.e. “useless eaters” as Herr Schicklegruber said. Planes are falling out of the sky all over as Boeing seeks to stop the chaos; Texas vigilantes hold INS agents at gunpoint to allow migrant mom and two kids to drown, hero principal in Iowa school shooting dies/ Any good news? Well, 4 year old Phenix is found lost in the woods after 3 days, inspirational firefighter saves Bob the Dog from frozen Utah lake, rassler Hulk Hogan rescues teenage girl from car crash and the economic indicators say that American shoppers are rejecting error-prone job destroying retail self checkout counters.
Wednesday, January 17, 2024 Dow: 37,266.67	Deep freeze and blustery blizzards sock Americans in trains, planes, automobiles and, especially, those living on the streets as death toll mounts. Pipes are bursting, trucks jackknifing on black ice and 2000 flights are canceled while a new disaster strikes the mountain West... avalanches. Bouncing about between New York courts and New Hampshire rallies, Donald Trump denounces lawsuit suer E. Jean Carroll as a “fake woman” but DeSantis fails to pounce. Instead he goes to South Carolina, giving up on the Granite State. Barred from the NH primary, President Joe stays in DC, denouncing the Houthis as terrorists or pirates or something worth killing and also promising to lower bank fees. The month of tributes roll on – this week it’s the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame which inducts REM, Hillary Lindsey, Timbaland, Dean Pitchford and Steely Dan
Thursday, January 18, 2024 Dow: 37,468.61	On the third straight day of temperatures below five in Chicago, Teslas are stalled all over because charging stations are frozen. Arctic blast death toll tops 28 due to avalanches, highway slick and slides and frozen homeless people. Experts line up to declare that NH primary is Nikki Haley’s last chance – she’s closer to Trump than in Iowa but not close enough. She and Trump compare each other to Just Joe-y Biden; she blames Trump for losing the Senate in 2022, he points to Ipsos national polling at 80% (Haley has 10%, St. Ron 9%). The winner faces a new danger, maybe even going nuclear before November as Iran-Pakistan war escalates and interested observers observe and prepare... India, Russia, China. Houthis continue bombing Red Sea shipping and Biden continues bombing Houthis, Israel continues bombing Gaza and Pauly Shore is signed to do a Richard Simmons biopic. AyGee Garland and DOJ investigators call out Uvalde, TX police for incompetence in a “cascade of failures”; cops in Chicago suburb tase autistic 14 year old and break his hip for wearing “suspicious clothes”. New York police finally nab the serial stabber who turns out to be a hospital greeter.
Friday, January 19, 2024 Dow: 37,863.80	House and Senate finally agree to kick the shutdown can into March, President Joe signs off and the stock market soars. Raging radical right-wing Republicans threaten Speaker Johnson, but don’t expel him... not yet. Some (like MTG) say the red line is helping Ukraine resist Russian conquest. Others call Gov. Abbott (R-Tx) for saying the Feds won’t let him shoot migrants. Another day, another round of storms. Stormy weather for Nikki as failed candidate Tim Scott (whom she appointed to the Senate) endorses Trump as do the current S.C. governor and lots of her former friends. More stormy weather strikes due to the strange happenstance of falling inflation and interest rates inspiring retailers to raise prices and when nobody buys their wares, go broke. Latest victims are Macy’s, WayFair and the no-longer-iconic Sports Illustrated. But there is good news. Days after heroic firefighter saves Bob the Dog from a frozen lake, Ruby the Dog saves her master by bringing him a life preserver to be pulled out of another frozen lake. Some smart TV producer will have to get those two together (are they spayed and neutered?)
Saturday, January 20, 2024 Dow: Closed	TV-con-mystics say that layoffs are “piling up” even though the billionaires are raking in even more investment swag as stock market risings due to shutdown can-kick flood America’s suites (if not streets) with cash. Boeing planes keep falling out of the sky. The latest cargo plane in Florida acquires a big hole over engine that causes it to catch fire. An emergency landing, no fatalities, and passengers survive another plane crash on a state highway in Virginia. Also crashing, Alec Baldwin, whose manslaughter charges were dropped but are now reinstated, He faces 18 months in prison. Win one, lose one for Major Tom. Axiom spacecraft flies international astronauts up to the ISS including an American, an Italian and a Turk. A Japanese mission makes a soft landing on the moon, but the vehicle, called SLIM is apparently running out of gas (or perhaps can’t find a charging station).
Sunday, January 21, 2024 Dow: Closed

THE DON JONES INDEX

CHART of CATEGORIES w/VALUE ADDED to EQUAL BASELINE of 15,000

(REFLECTING… approximately… DOW JONES INDEX of June 27, 2013)

Negative/harmful indices in RED. See a further explanation of categories here…

ECONOMIC INDICES (60%)

CATEGORY	VALUE	BASE	RESULTS			SCORE		OUR SOURCES and COMMENTS
INCOME	(24%)	6/17/13 & 1/1/22	LAST	CHANGE	NEXT	LAST WEEK	THIS WEEK
Wages (hrly. Per cap)	9%	1350 points	12/25/23	+0.41%	1/24	1,477.19	1,483.24	https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wages 29.30 .42
Median Inc. (yearly)	4%	600	12/25/23	+0.03%	1/22/24	666.75	666.95	http://www.usdebtclock.org/   39,317 328 339
Unempl. (BLS – in mi)	4%	600	12/25/23	-5.41%	1/24	616.55	616.55	http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000/  3.7 NC
Official (DC – in mi)	2%	300	12/25/23	+0.22%	1/22/24	250.46	249.91	http://www.usdebtclock.org/      6,373 387 402
Unofficl. (DC – in mi)	2%	300	12/25/23	-0.15%	1/22/24	287.96	288.40	http://www.usdebtclock.org/     11,180 163 146
Workforce Particip. Number Percent	2%	300	12/25/23	+0.038% +0.026%	1/22/24	304.09	304.17	In 162,311 373 434 Out 99,469 451 436 Total: 261,780 824 http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 62.00 916
WP % (ycharts)*	1%	150	1/1/24	-0.48%	1/24	150.95	150.95	https://ycharts.com/indicators/labor_force_participation_rate 62.50
OUTGO	15%

Total Inflation	7%	1050	1/24	+0.3%	2/24	973.14	970.22	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.1 0.3
Food	2%	300	1/24	+0.2%	2/24	274.62	274.07	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.2 0.2
Gasoline	2%	300	1/24	+0.2%	2/24	247.04	246.55	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm    -6.0 +0.2
Medical Costs	2%	300	1/24	+0.7%	2/24	294.01	291.95	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.6 0.7
Shelter	2%	300	1/24	+0.5%	2/24	269.20	267.85	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.3 0.5

WEALTH	6%
Dow Jones Index	2%	300	1/1/24	+0.39%	1/22/24	309.34	310.39	https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/index/ 37,466.11 592.98
Home (Sales) (Valuation)	1% 1%	150 150	1/1/24	+0.79% -1.07%	1/24	123.97 279.71	123.97 279.71	https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics nc Sales (M):  3.82 Valuations (K):  387.6
Debt (Personal)	2%	300	1/1/24	+0.04%	1/22/24	269.67	269.56	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    75,104 134 163
NATIONAL	(10%)
Revenue (trilns.)	2%	300	1/1/24	+0.24%	1/22/24	391.06	392.00	debtclock.org/       4,600 611 622
Expenditures (tr.)	2%	300	1/1/24	-0.24%	1/22/24	323,98	323.22	debtclock.org/       6,344 359 374
National Debt tr.)	3%	450	1/1/24	+0.056%	1/22/24	395.95	395.73	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    34,016 035 055 (The debt ceiling... presumably now kicked forward to March... had been 31.4 before the first of several punts; having risen to slightly below 34 as of New Years’ Day. See next week’s Lesson for more on the next can kick... Speaker Johnson’s first.)
Aggregate Debt (tr.)	3%	450	1/1/24	+0.054%	1/22/24	408.41	408.19	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    97,362 415 467
GLOBAL	(5%)
Foreign Debt (tr.)	2%	300	1/1/24	+0.011%	1/22/24	323.72	323.68	http://www.usdebtclock.org/   7,611 619 627
Exports (in billions)	1%	150	1/24	-1.97%	12/23	160.74	157.57	https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 258.8 253.7
Imports (bl.)	1%	150	1/24	+1.92%	12/23	169.60	172.86	https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 323.0 316.9
Trade Deficit (bl.)	1%	150	1123	+2.06%	12/23	325.85	332.56	https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 64.5 63.2

SOCIAL INDICES (40%)
ACTS of MAN	12%
World Affairs	3%		450			1/1/24		+0.3%			1/22/24		457.44	458.81	Regime changes in @, @ and Denmark…Freddy 10 succeedsabdicating mom, Queen Margrethe (Mary) II
War and terrorism	2%		300			1/1/24		+0.1%			1/22/24		297.83	298.13	Palestinians and Israelis recognize (not celebrate) 100 days of war. How much longer? Ask the Ukes.
Politics	3%		450			1/1/24		-0.3%			1/22/24		482.84	481.39
Economics	3%		450			1/1/24		-0.3%			1/22/24		442.37	441.04
Crime	1%		150			1/1/24		+0.1%			1/22/24		243.08	243.32	Gilgo Beach ReAccused of 4^th murder, six more pending.
ACTS of GOD	(6%)
Environment/Weather	3%		450				1/1/24	-0.4%			1/22/24		393.43	391.86
Disasters	3%		450				1/1/24	+0.2%			1/22/24		420.85	421.69	Heroic principal who saved students from school shooter dies of his own wounds.
LIFESTYLE/JUSTICE INDEX							(15%)
Science, Tech, Educ.	4%		600				1/1/24	-0.2%		1/22/24			632.77	631.50
Equality (econ/social)	4%		600				1/1/24	+0.2%		1/22/24			634.91	636.18	Air Force fighter pilot wins Miss America. Be afraid, Taliban... she’s unveiled!
Health	4%		600				1/1/24	-0.2%		1/22/24			470.57	469.63
Freedom and Justice	3%		450				1/1/24	-0.1%		1/22/24			470.56	470.09
MISCELLANEOUS and TRANSIENT INDEX												(6%)
Cultural incidents		3%		450	1/1/24			+0.2%	1/22/24				516.91	517.94	Award tallies: Oppenheimer beats Barbie 8-6 at Critics’ Choice.
Misc. incidents		3%		450	1/1/24			+0.2%	1/22/24				501.45	502.45	After a human saves Bob the Dog and Ruby the Dog saves a human (above), Korea finally bans the sale of dog meat.

The Don Jones Index for the week of January 15th through 21st, 2024 was DOWN 0.68 points

The Don Jones Index is sponsored by the Coalition for a New Consensus: retired Congressman and Independent Presidential candidate Jack “Catfish” Parnell, Chairman; Brian Doohan, Administrator. The CNC denies, emphatically, allegations that the organization, as well as any of its officers (including former Congressman Parnell, environmentalist/America-Firster Austin Tillerman and cosmetics CEO Rayna Finch) and references to Parnell’s works, “Entropy and Renaissance” and “The Coming Kill-Off” are fictitious or, at best, mere pawns in the web-serial “Black Helicopters” – and promise swift, effective legal action against parties promulgating this and/or other such slanders.

Comments, complaints, donations (especially SUPERPAC donations) always welcome at feedme@generisis.com or: speak@donjonesindex.com.

ATTACHMENT ONE – FROM THE GUARDIAN U.K.

DESANTIS BOOKED HIS TICKET OUT OF IOWA – BUT IS HE STILL ON THE ROAD TO NOWHERE?

Trump had an overwhelming victory and is leading polls in other states, it’s not clear where DeSantis can regain momentum

Chris Stein in Des Moines Tue 16 Jan 2024 15.26 EST

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.

“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,” DeSantis said.

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.

“I don’t see much good for him in the short term,” said Michael Binder, a political science professor at the University of North Florida. “It’s not going to happen in New Hampshire. So, the narrative then, for the next three weeks, is going to be, what’s he doing? Does he have money to continue?”

DeSantis launched his campaign last May with endorsements, money and a pitch to replicate his conservative remaking of Florida’s laws on the national level. But he ran into the same problem every other Republican presidential contender has: Trump’s continued stranglehold on the GOP base. The former president had led most polls throughout last year, and saw his edge grow sharper with each criminal indictment against him.

Trump also repeatedly outmaneuvered DeSantis, most notably by picking up endorsements from lawmakers in Florida and holding an edge in polls that the governor was never able to overcome.

Meanwhile, DeSantis’s campaign lost staff throughout last year, while Never Back Down, the Super Pac supporting him, struggled to maintain donors and parted ways with a key strategist. In the final days before Iowa’s caucuses, DeSantis began referring to himself as an “underdog”, and on Monday, that status was confirmed when Trump won every county in the state, except for one that Haley picked up. DeSantis carried none.

“I think DeSantis’s struggles are, at this point, kind of embedded into him. He’s not the most charismatic of candidates, he struggles to connect with people, he has some weird ticks that people find off-putting. And that’s hard to overcome when you’re going up against essentially an incumbent,” Binder said.

On Tuesday morning, DeSantis went on the attack against Haley after she announced she would only attend debates against Trump or Joe Biden. “I won’t snub New Hampshire voters like both Nikki Haley and Donald Trump, and plan to honor my commitments,” DeSantis wrote on X.

Matt Gaetz, a rightwing Florida congressman and Trump ally, responded: “It’s over man.”

ATTACHMENT TWO – FROM THE GUARDIAN U.K.

‘A SAD CIRCUS’: IOWA CAUCUSES ARRIVE WITH LITTLE DOUBT OVER LIKELY REPUBLICAN VICTOR

Opinion polls show Donald Trump’s immense lead over Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley in first state to vote on nominee

David Smith in Des Moines, Iowa Sun 14 Jan 2024 05.00 EST

Few people relish the Iowa caucuses, the first act of the greatest political show on earth, more than Mike Draper. Since 2008 the Iowa native has hosted US presidential candidates at his novelty retail store and made tongue-in-cheek political merchandise. But this time, he feels, something is missing.

“We’ve always had a fairly good finger on the pulse and it’s normally a circus but this year is just a sad circus,” said Draper, owner of Raygun in the state capital, Des Moines. “People are still going through the motions but there’s no real drama to it.”

That is because Donald Trump, a twice-impeached former president still facing 91 criminal charges, is poised to complete his political resurrection on Monday with victory in the first nominating contest to decide which Republican takes on the Democratic incumbent Joe Biden in November’s election.

Opinion polls show Trump casting a giant shadow over the sparsely populated, snow-swept state despite campaigning far less there than his rivals Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley. Most analyses say the question is not if he will win but by how much.

It is a rare anti-climax for political aficionados in Iowa, which takes its outsized role in vetting the world’s most powerful person very seriously. Draper, 41, who votes Democratic, reflected: “We make a lot of shirts about sports and it’s tricky because it’s hard to make product that sells for a losing team but it’s also hard to make product that sells for a team that’s blowing everybody out.

“This year, even on the Republican side, it’s almost like an incumbent is running uncontested and then you had DeSantis and Haley having a two-person debate in Des Moines while the guy who’s blowing them out of the water doesn’t even show up.”

Such is the lack of engagement that, when Draper’s staff mounted a display to celebrate the caucuses, curious onlookers assumed it must be related to Presidents’ Day in February or Independence Day in July. The store responded with characteristic dry wit on a T-shirt: “Election 2024: You’d think battling a fascist takeover of America would spark more interest from people.”

Another T-shirt, based on a snatch of conversation overheard on the New York subway, says: “What the hell is a caucus? And where the hell is Iowa?” These are questions that get asked every four years. A caucus is a gathering at a neighbourhood location, such as a school, church or union hall, where representatives make speeches on behalf of their favoured candidates. People then vote by secret ballot.

‘People don’t even feel like they need to meet him in person.’ Trump has held only 24 events in Iowa, compared with DeSantis’s 99 events. Photograph: Christian Monterrosa/AFP/Getty Images

Iowa is a midwestern state with the same population size as Wales (3.1 million). Hogs outnumber people by more than seven to one. It is whiter and more rural than most of the US. It has hosted the official start of every presidential campaign for the last half-century, offering a test of humility as candidates brave the icy plains to visit churches, diners, farms and school gyms, look voters in the eye and make their pitch.

But the old maxim that “all politics is local” applies less in today’s nationalised, media-driven political landscape. Trump, 77, is the first loser of a presidential election to compete in Iowa four years later. He has the infrastructure and money to run the organised ground game that caucuses demand. His celebrity status has overwhelmed his hard-toiling opponents and enabled him to campaign at arm’s length.

He held only 24 events in 19 counties in Iowa between 1 January 2023 and 4 January 2024, according to data collected by the Des Moines Register newspaper. This was far fewer than DeSantis (99 events in 57 counties), Haley (51 events in 30 counties) and Ramaswamy (239 events in 94 counties). Even Trump’s campaign surrogates have been drawing bigger crowds in the state than actual candidates.

Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “For people like Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis, first-time candidates, Iowa’s important to be there in person but Trump is campaigning on the persona and mythology of Trump as much as anything else.

“People don’t even feel like they need to meet him in person. He’s become a standard bearer for people who feel disenfranchised by whatever they view as the establishment and, even though they get a lot of benefits from the Biden administration programmes, Biden has been terrible at selling them.”

A recent survey put Trump 34 percentage points clear of the field, suggesting that voters here care little for warnings that he is a nascent dictator ready to shred democracy. One major reason is born-again or evangelical Christians, who made up nearly two-thirds of caucus-goers during the 2016 Republican presidential primary, according to exit polling.

This group seems willing to overlook his moral shortcomings if it means electing a perceived fighter who will deliver its objectives. Karen Johnson, a 67-year-old evangelical Christian, told the New York Times: “Trump is our David and our Goliath,” – neatly capturing his combination of sacred and profane.

Art Cullen, editor of the Storm Lake Times newspaper, said: “North-west Iowa, where I live, is the most conservative part of the state and it’s just very solidly pro-Trump, including a lot of evangelicals who Ron DeSantis has been trying to court.

“Trump is just dominant in Iowa. It’s going to be a good night for him.”

But elections are also an expectations game and, if Trump dips below 50% of the vote in Iowa, it will be seen as a disappointment. In recent days his advisers have been reminding reporters that no Republican presidential candidate has won a contested Iowa caucus by more than 12 points since Bob Dole in 1988.

During the weekend, extreme weather made Iowa’s roads dangerous and wreaked havoc with the final sprint of the caucus campaign. On Friday the state patrol posted a warning on social media that said: “Please, don’t put yourself or others in danger.”

Trump’s campaign was forced to cancel three out of four in-person rallies over the weekend, opting to hold tele-rallies instead “out of an abundance of caution amid severe weather advisories”. Haley, who cancelled all three of her events on Friday, quipped to voters during a virtual town hall: “I definitely know I’m not in South Carolina anymore.”

DeSantis did manage to hold an event on Friday morning in Ankeny, close to Des Moines, and said of the caucuses: “I know it’s gonna be cold. I know it’s gonna be not the most pleasant, but I don’t think you’ll ever be able to pass a vote that has more impact.”

Iowans are famously hardy but Monday is forecast to be a record cold caucus night with temperatures predicted to dip as low as -14F (-26C). Biting winds could make it feel as cold as -45F in some places.

This could reduce turnout but again might favour Trump because he has a fiercely loyal base. He confidently predicted last weekend: “We won’t lose one vote, because our people, they’re going to walk on glass.”

Two subplots of this year’s caucuses are the implosion of DeSantis, 45, and the rise of 51-year-old Haley. A year ago the Florida governor was being hailed as a new Republican saviour who could offer Trumpism without Trump: rightwing populist policies without legal baggage or crass antics. Tens of millions of dollars, countless air miles and several staff departures later, he has little to show for it.

Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said: “The biggest surprise in the past 12 months politically has been the steady weakening of the DeSantis candidacy. He was presented to the world as a person who had just about all Donald Trump’s virtues – as Republicans define them – with none of his vices and look at what’s happened to him.”

A third-place finish for DeSantis on Monday could end his bid for the White House. Galston added: “Ron DeSantis has bet the farm on Iowa and, if he finishes an ignominious third, he will be a dead man walking and the only question is how long will he walk before he collapses. If he finishes a stronger than expected second, which you can’t rule out based on the amount of ground-level work he and his team have done there, that would be a surprise.”

DeSantis has been criticised for lacking charm and charisma, more naturally predisposed to a scowl than a smile. One commentator memorably described him as the kind of guy who might unplug your life support to recharge his mobile phone.

Schiller of Brown University said: “He’s not quite as good in person on the stump as people had hoped he would be and that was a problem. DeSantis tried to be Trump version two but the problem for him is that version one is running. At the end of the day, people like the original.

“That happens in American politics: if you are unique – and Trump is, we can argue safely, unique – it’s hard to imitate it. You’ve seen all these candidates who try to imitate Trump fall flat on their face. Ron DeSantis is just an extended example of what happened to Senate candidates in 2022. As long as Trump is out there and is walking, talking and breathing, nobody wants the imitation.”

Despite a recent gaffe over the cause of the civil war, when she failed to mention slavery, Haley has donor money and momentum on her side. A strong finish in Iowa would set her up well for New Hampshire, where some polls show her cutting Trump’s lead to single digits, and where the anti-Trump candidate Chris Christie’s recent decision to drop out could give her a further boost in support.

John Zogby, an author and pollster, said: “She’s run the best campaign and she’s also the best candidate in terms of the tools and the rules. She is very good on her feet most of the time and she has a cheerful personality and is very subtly appealing to moderate and independent voters.”

Normally, victory in Iowa is a step, not a leap, towards the White House. In 2008, Mike Huckabee won and John McCain trailed in fourth, but McCain became the nominee. In 2012, Rick Santorum edged out Mitt Romney but it was Romney who became the party’s standard bearer. And in 2016, Ted Cruz beat Trump into second place, only for Trump to secure the nomination and the presidency.

But a big win for Trump on Monday will imply that his iron grip on the Republican party endures and a third consecutive nomination is his to lose. It will also signify a remarkable comeback for a man who suffered a crushing defeat by Biden in the 2020 presidential election, instigated a riot at the US Capitol in a desperate bid to overturn it and became the first former president hit by criminal indictments. And it will serve as a warning against complacency for Democrats and anyone around the world who fears a second Trump presidency.

Joe Walsh, a former congressman who challenged the incumbent Trump in the 2020 Iowa caucuses and polled at 1%, said: “I expect him to win big. I expect Haley and DeSantis to be very distant. I expect maybe Haley to end up ahead of DeSantis and I wouldn’t be surprised if DeSantis gets out before New Hampshire and endorses Trump.”

Walsh has not been surprised to see few Republican candidates directly attack Trump for most of the campaign. “Both Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, everybody in this primary, it’s been fucking mission impossible. This is Trump’s party and none of them have been trying to beat him. If you attack Trump, you’re done as a Republican. There’s no anti-Trump lane in that party. Period.”

ATTACHMENT THREE – FROM THE GUARDIAN U.K.

WITH THE FAKE DRAMA OF THE IOWA CAUCUSES OVER, WE CAN FOCUS ON TRUMP’S REAL DANGERS

Trump is gliding to the nomination – and promising a lot of troubling things to his voters

By Osita Nwanevu Tue 16 Jan 2024 12.01 EST

There were no surprises out of Iowa. Donald Trump had led the state’s polls by about 30 points and current tallies suggest that he’s won by about that much.

The voters who braved the bitter cold to officially kick off the Republican primary were, plainly, exactly the ones the former president needed and wanted – ABC’s entrance polls registered immigration and the economy as their top issues and additionally found that 63% of caucus-goers would consider Trump fit for the presidency even if he were convicted of a crime. All of this was predictable; all of it suggests that the time and energy the candidates and the media alike have spent hyping up this first contest ⁠– and perhaps this primary campaign as a whole ⁠– have been mostly wasted.

There was a bit of manufactured drama over the question of whether Trump would win the caucuses by at least 50%, in keeping with his standing in the pre-caucus polls – a metric Haley took a particular interest in given that Trump’s “underperformance” on that score might narratively lay the groundwork for a potential upset in New Hampshire.

But it’s been widely forgotten that Trump actually lost Iowa back in 2016 as a much weaker candidate before going on to take the nomination. He’s doing well enough in the national polls ⁠– with the support of more than 60% of the Republican electorate ⁠– that losing New Hampshire won’t be fatal for him and losing Iowa altogether likely wouldn’t have been either.

If it was ever in the cards, Trump’s defeat in the primaries was never going to be a matter of dominoes tipping away after a crucial loss ⁠– without a campaign and a message that can capture a meaningful of the voters Trump has held in thrall since taking the presidency nearly eight years ago, his opponents were never going to succeed. And right now they appear no closer to hitting upon the right approach.

Ron DeSantis, who needed a respectable finish in Iowa and seems to have edged Haley out for second place at time of writing, has been grasping for one even more desperately than usual in recent days. With the grim resignation of a man with nothing left to lose, he even tried telling the truth. On Friday, he called out Fox News and the rest of the conservative press for protecting Trump and denouncing his critics; he followed this up on Sunday with an uncharacteristically pointed critique of Trump’s narcissism.

“You can be the strongest, most dynamic, successful Republican and conservative in America, but [if] you don’t kiss that ring, then he’ll try to trash you,” DeSantis told a crowd on Sunday. “You deserve a nominee that’s going to put you first, not himself.”

There’s been some talk about whether airing these critiques of Trump earlier on might have boosted DeSantis’s candidacy, but the actual course of the primary suggests DeSantis would have wound up in the Republican party’s marginalized anti-Trump minority with Nikki Haley, at best, or found himself an also-ran like Chris Christie at worst. Trying to be all things to all the party’s constituencies at once seems to have worked out better for him, but not well enough to put a real dent in Trump’s standing.

As such, Trump is still on a glide path to the nomination; as the press absorbs that fact, we might finally see more sustained attention to what he’s been saying and promising to voters. His recent comments about immigrants “poisoning the blood of the country” and Washington DC have raised some of the old alarms, though reporting on the ground suggests this rhetoric isn’t lighting the same fires among Trump supporters that it used to.

“He relies on a shorthand legible only to his most dedicated followers, and his tendency to get lost in rhetorical cul-de-sacs of self-pity and anger wears thin,” the Atlantic’s McKay Coppins recently observed in a piece on his latest rallies. “This doesn’t necessarily make him less dangerous. There is a rote quality now to his darkest rhetoric that I found more unnerving than when it used to command wall-to-wall news coverage.”

His rhetoric may well command that kind of attention again soon, but the incentives that drove eyes away from Trump will be in play for a little while longer as these early races continue. The political press thrives on uncertainty and will create some uncertainty where none really exists; there remains too, among Trump’s Republican critics and political reporters alike, a drive to convince the country and themselves that the conservative movement is, even now, more than a cult of personality.

And it is, really: Trump is the product of currents on the right that long preceded him and will live on after he leaves the political stage, whenever that might be. He’s simply channeled them far more effectively than his challengers ⁠– so much more so that he remains the party’s likely nominee.

ATTACHMENT FOUR – FROM TIME

IN IOWA, TRUMP RELIES ON MAGA SURROGATES

BY ERIC CORTELLESSA JANUARY 13, 2024 6:00 AM EST

In the final days before the Iowa caucuses next Monday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley are both embarking on a tried-and-true tactic: Barnstorming the state to meet and win over as many voters as possible.

Donald Trump? Not so much. While the former President recently participated in a Fox News Town Hall in Des Moines and plans to hold four virtual rallies over the weekend, it has fallen on MAGA World surrogates to engage in the kind of one-on-one voter interactions that are the lifeblood of Iowa politics.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Eric Trump all visited the Hawkeye State last week. Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and Donald Trump, Jr. each held events on Thursday where they kibitzed with voters and took selfies with fans. Arizona Senate candidate and Iowa native Kari Lake came to Des Moines on Friday to mobilize her fellow America First adherents. And 14 prominent MAGA Republicans—including Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz—are holding a meet-and-greet with voters on Monday.

The brigade of Trump disciples are key to the former President’s Iowa ground game and show how Trump’s starpower has elevated him beyond mundane retail politics. They may also be a sign of how he plans to campaign over the coming year when he’s bogged down in four separate criminal cases against him.

That was the scenario on Thursday, when Trump was in a New York courtroom for the closing arguments of a $370 million civil fraud and he unleashed a barrage of attacks against the judge presiding over the case. “This is a fraud on me,” Trump said. More than 1,000 miles across the country, Trump’s on-the-ground campaigning was outsourced to proxies. Carson attended a faith event outside Cedar Rapids, and Trump's eldest son revved up an Urbandale crowd with punchlines and provocations. That same day, DeSantis held five events in Iowa and Haley had two.

It was a microcosm of a larger trend in the campaign cycle. Trump has held 25 events in Iowa since announcing his campaign in January 2023. During that same time period, DeSantis has held 136 and Haley 75, according to a Des Moines Register tracker.

“Trump has always played by a different set of rules,” says David Kochel, a veteran of Iowa Republican campaigns. “DeSantis goes to 99 counties. Trump goes to six counties, but people show up from 99 counties because they come from all over the place. DeSantis has to go to them. For Trump, they come to him.”

DeSantis has roughly a dozen campaign events scheduled statewide from Saturday until caucusing begins Monday night. Haley has eight. After a snowstorm hit the midwestern state overnight Friday, with wind chills below zero, Haley turned her three scheduled town halls that day into Zoom gatherings. The wintry weather has impacted all comers. Trump was planning on holding large in-person rallies over the weekend, but will now have them online.

Retail politics have always played an outsize role in Iowa, the first-in-the-nation nominating contest that has the power to shrink the field and reshape the contours of the race. Given Iowa’s small population and the nature of conducting caucuses instead of voters casting traditional ballots, it’s a state that rewards politicians with an endearing personal touch. And it often means that candidates have a chance to meet many of the individual voters who will decide their fate. Hence the old joke about the Iowa voter who's asked whether they will support a candidate: “I don’t know,” they say. “I only met them four or five times.”

DeSantis and Haley are going into overdrive to cover as much state territory as they can. The two are currently locked in a battle for second place. The current FiveThirtyEight average of polling has Trump with 51% of the vote, and Haley and DeSantis neck and neck: 17% to 16%. The aim for each campaign in Iowa is to have a convincing enough second place finish that they cement their status as Trump’s only obstacle to the nomination. That way, they surmise, they can consolidate enough Republicans in the coming months to put an end to Trump’s reign of the GOP.

DeSantis may have the most at stake in Iowa. He has wagered his primary strategy on winning the Hawkeye State and is polling poorly in the upcoming primary states of New Hampshire and South Carolina. “The delta between him and Trump needs to be smaller than the delta between him and Haley,” says Kochel. According to Steve Deace, the popular right-wing radio talk show host who endorsed DeSantis and campaigned with him Thursday night, the Florida governor needs to show that he’s “the clear alternative to Donald Trump in the race.”

For the Trump campaign, the objective is to have such a dominant win that it deprives either DeSantis or Haley of the oxygen for a sustained challenge. Trump campaign officials tell TIME they hope to beat the record for the largest margin of victory in Iowa caucus history—13 points—set by Bob Dole in 1988.

At the heart of Trump's Iowa effort is to ensure that his loyal base turns out for him during what is expected to be one of the coldest nights in Iowa caucus history. Trump’s team has been pursuing that endgame through a one-two-punch of having Trump hold large rallies while his surrogates—many of whom have risen in popularity through the conservative media ecosystem that Trump helped to create—meet with voters at smaller, more intimate gatherings.

For some, it’s working. Philip Hansen, 77, says he’s seen Trump before but appreciated the opportunity to listen to Trump Jr. at an Urbandale restaurant on Thursday. “I’ve never seen Donald Trump’s son before,” the retired open road trucker says. “This is the first time I get to see him.” Hansen says he caucused for Trump in 2016 and plans to do so again on Monday night.

ATTACHMENT FIVE – FROM THE GUARDIAN U.K.

TIMELINE...

Tue 16 Jan 2024 00.24 EST

20.37 EST

Trump wins the Republican presidential caucuses in Iowa, AP projects

The caucuses kicked off just 30 Minutes ago, but the Associated Press has already made its call for Donald Trump.

There’s no surprise – Trump has been by far the frontrunner. Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis are in a high-stakes fight for second place. How big Trump’s victory is, and how closely behind Haley and DeSantis trail could set the tone for how the rest of the primaries pan out.

·

·

Updated at 22.19 EST

17h ago00.15 EST

Iowa caucus recap

Donald Trump won by a landslide in Iowa Monday, with Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley trailing in a distant second and third place, respectively. The former president’s victory was so clear and decisive that the Associated Press projected his win just 30 Minutes after the caucuses began – much to the ire of DeSantis.

· A jubilant Trump offered an unusually conciliatory call for unity in his speech Monday night. “I really think this is time now for everybody, our country, to come together,” he said. He also celebrated poll findings that the majority of Iowa Republics did not accept the validity of the 2020 election results.

· Delegates will be allocated proportionally, once all the votes from across the state have been tabulated. But the night’s results are a big blow to both DeSantis and Haley. The former, especially, invested massive amounts of time and effort in the state, visiting all 99 of Iowa’s counties.

· DeSantis told supporters at his watch party Monday night, “I can tell you because of your support, in spite of all of that, that they threw at us – everyone against us – we’ve got our ticket punched out of Iowa.” Haley, meanwhile, insisted that this was a “two-person race” between her and Trump.

· Vivek Ramaswamy finished fourth and ended his campaign, endorsing Trump as he bowed out.

· Frigid conditions and chilly winds, which the National Weather Service said made for dangerous conditions across the state, may have impacted turnout, which is estimated to be notably lower than 2016.

Trump wins big in Iowa as Republican contest kicks off 2024 presidential race

Read more

18h ago23.55 EST

When he arrived on stage to chants of “Ron, Ron, Ron”, Ron DeSantis cast the night as a successful stand against an array of forces his enemies had deployed against him.

“They threw everything but the kitchen sink at us,” he said, pointing to his opponents’ spending on ads targeting him, and negative coverage his campaign received from news outlets.

“But they were just so excited about the fact that 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, that they threw at us — everyone against us — we’ve got our ticket punched out of Iowa.”

Finishing second in the state is the best result DeSantis could realistically hope for, and will keep his campaign alive going into New Hampshire’s primary on 23 January. However, it’s unclear if he can replicate that result in the Granite State, where Nikki Haley has seen a polling surge recently that may have put her within striking distance of Trump.

17h ago23.48 EST

Nikki Haley addressed her supporters as well, thanking Iowans, who she called “faithful and patriotic Americans”.

“I can safely say, tonight Iowa safely made this Republican primary a two person race,” she said. “The question before Americans now is very clear – do you want more of the same, or do you want a new generation of conservative leadership.

Haley appears to be referencing to a race between her and Trump – but her path ahead after sliding into a distant third tonight remains unclear.

“Our campaign is the last best hope of stopping the Trump-Biden nightmare,” she said.

17h ago23.39 EST

“They threw everything but the kitchen sink at us,” said Ron DeSantis, speaking to supporters in Des Moines.

After all the time and funds his campaign poured into Iowa, his performance tonight will be a disappointment. But his candidacy has survived to fight another day. “We’ve got our ticket punched out of Iowa,” he said.

17h ago23.34 EST

Ron DeSantis cinches second place, AP projects

The Florida governor has finished a “distant second” to Donald Trump, the Associated Press projects. Nikki Haley is expected to come third.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has finished a distant second to former President Donald Trump in Iowa's leadoff Republican caucuses. Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley came in third. https://t.co/yjeQ0DE6WV pic.twitter.com/9qhTgBX1yF

— The Associated Press (@AP) January 16, 2024

17h ago23.32 EST

Vivek Ramaswamy drops out

“There’s no path for me to be the next president absent things that we don’t want to see happen in this country,” Vivek Ramaswamy told supporters in Des Moines.

He reflected on his candidacy. “Nobody knew who we were, nobody knew what we were up to, but together, we have created a movement that I think is going to carry our nation to the next level,” he says.

He endorsed Donald Trump for the presidency.

Chris Stein

Ron DeSantis’s watch party is getting underway, with social conservative activist Bob Vander Plaats pitching the Florida governor as the right candidate to beat Joe Biden.

“Now we will have a real fight between whether or not we’re going to return to someone who has proven all he knows how to do is lose to Democrats. Him and his candidates, for the last three cycles, that’s all they’ve done. For the rest of the country, tired of losing to these guys, let’s go with the guy who beat them and that is Ron DeSantis,” Vander Plaats said.

·

·

17h ago23.26 EST

By Eline Gordts

Nearly two-thirds of Iowa Republicans polled while entering the caucuses on Monday evening by Edison Research said they did not believe Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election.

A majority of the 1,577 caucus-goers the firm questioned said Donald Trump would be fit to return to the presidency even if he were convicted of a crime. And nearly half of the respondents said they considered themselves part of Trump’s MAGA movement.

The results underline Trump’s hold on the Republican party in Iowa.

Here’s more from Reuters on the results:

Following are highlights from the Edison Research poll based on interviews with 1,577 Iowa Republicans. The results will be updated as more interviews are collected.

* 65% said they did not think Biden legitimately won the presidency in 2020.
* 64% said they decided who to support in the presidential nomination contest before this month.
* 63% said Trump would still be fit to be president if he were convicted of a crime. 32% said he would be unfit if convicted.
* 59% said they favor a federal law that would ban abortions nationwide.
* 51% of white caucus-goers who considered themselves evangelical or born-again Christians supported Trump, while 29% backed DeSantis.
* 44% of voters said they considered themselves part of the MAGA movement, a reference to Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan. 51% said they were not part of that movement.
* Trump led Haley and DeSantis by double digits among men and women alike. But among college graduates Trump was preferred by about 36% of caucus-goers, compared to 30% for Haley and 27% for DeSantis.
* 37% 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 d values mattered most.
Edison Research conducted the poll on behalf of the National Election Pool, a consortium of news organizations including Reuters.

·

·

Updated at 23.26 EST

17h ago23.24 EST

Vivek Ramaswamy is dropping out of the race, per multiple reports.

It’s unclear who he’ll endorse once he’s out.

·

·

17h ago23.22 EST

Donald Trump is still talking, and after he delivered a few likely planned lines on unity, he’s started improvising, as he’s wont to.

Calling for law and order, the former president referenced the defacement of the Capitol on January 6.

Trump: "We're gonna scrub those marble columns and get the swastickers off them." pic.twitter.com/WbcGh7jAOV

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 16, 2024

He also boasted about polling showing that the majority of caucusgoers questioned the 2020 election results.

·

Chris Stein

Ron DeSantis’s caucus night watch party is taking place at a Sheraton hotel in West Des Moines.

A ballroom packed with supporters, reporters and children is waiting for the Florida governor, but there’s no sign of him yet. Perhaps he’s waiting to find out for sure whether he finished in second or third.

If it’s the latter, many believe it would be a crushing blow to his campaign’s viability. But with a second place finish, he could make the case to supporters that he has a path forward in New Hampshire, the next state to vote in the GOP nomination process.

·

·

17h ago23.13 EST

An estimated 100,000 voters participated in the caucus today, according to the Iowa Republican Party chairman, Jeff Kaufmann.

That’s far short of the 187,000 Republicans who caucused in 2016.

We are on track to have nearly 100k Iowans participating in the 2024 Caucus despite freezing temperatures and our beautiful state being blanketed in snow just two days ago.

Iowans will brave the cold for the future of their families, communities, and country.

THANK YOU, IOWA!

— Jeff Kaufmann (@kaufmannGOP) January 16, 2024

ATTACHMENT SIX – FROM THE GUARDIAN U.K

TIMELINE

IOWA CAUCUSES 2024: TRUMP WINS STATE AS DESANTIS PROJECTED TO WIN SECOND PLACE – AS IT HAPPENED

Ex-president beats Republican rivals as DeSantis finishes a distant second, Haley slides into third place and Ramaswamy drops out

· Iowa results tracker: how the candidates rank

· Trump wins in Iowa as contest kicks off 2024 election race

17h ago

Iowa caucus recap

·

18h ago

Ron DeSantis cinches second place, AP projects

·

18h ago

Vivek Ramaswamy drops out

·

18h ago

Trump speaks in Des Moines

·

19h ago

Economy, border, foreign policy: key issues for Iowans

·

20h ago

DeSantis campaign complains about vote call for Trump

·

20h ago

Trump campaign celebrating win

·

21h ago

Trump wins the Republican presidential caucuses in Iowa, AP projects

·

21h ago

Donald Trump Jr asked if he would run in 2028

·

22h ago

Caucuses in Iowa kick off

·

23h ago

Donald Trump meets campaign advisers in Des Moines

·

24h ago

Summary of Iowa caucuses before voting begins...

·

24h ago

Donald Trump Jr urges Iowa voters to show up for Trump despite cold

·

1d ago

Kamala Harris warns of Republicans posing 'profound threat' to freedoms

·

1d ago

Republican candidates espousing extremist ideas, Illinois governor tells Iowa Democratic event

·

1d ago

What is a precinct captain - and what do they do?

·

1d ago

'Don’t believe the fake news': Haley hits back at Trump's attacks

·

1d ago

Summary of Iowa caucuses day so far

·

1d ago

Economy, border, foreign policy: key issues as Iowans head to caucus

·

1d ago

Trump steps up attacks against Haley and DeSantis on morning of Iowa caucuses

·

1d ago

Lloyd Austin released from hospital, says Pentagon

·

1d ago

How will Iowa shape the 2024 US election?

·

1d ago

Explainer: What are the Iowa caucuses?

·

1d ago

Trump, Haley, DeSantis in big test in freezing Iowa

·

1d ago

Trump holds dominant lead ahead of Iowa caucuses, poll finds

·

1d ago

Iowans told to 'limit outdoor exposure' as the 'dangerous cold' sweeps the state

·

1d ago

Biden and the Democrats raise $97m to close out 2023

·

1d ago

Trump forecast to get nearly 50% of vote in final Iowa poll as brutal cold grips state

@USE A

ATTACHMENT SEVEN – FROM TIME

How MAGA Hijacked the Conservative Movement

By Phillip Elliott

Tina Nguyen has enjoyed—well, sometimes enjoyed; often, endured—a front-row seat to the evolution of the MAGA movement. During her college years, Nguyen took the conservative movement’s scholarships and grants to work in and then document the Tea Party, which spiraled into Donald Trump’s visions of how he would Make America Great Again. Nguyen’s own half-joking identity as a “cheerful nihilist” morphed as she built her own professional name without so much reliance on conservative dollars. The pluck she once felt as a challenge-it-all student at Claremont McKenna College —a battleground in our current culture wars—began to feel less fun and more fundamentalist.

The discovery that her journalism mentor was using his network of former students to seed white supremacy into mainstream and center-right newsrooms finally crushed her faith in the cause. It also helped her move into more mainstream, less political writing, picking up a nomination for a James Beard Foundation Award for food blogging in 2014 as she took a break from the political fight. But the story was too good, and she returned to covering politics for some of the best brands in journalism.

This week marks the publication of Nguyen’s first book, The MAGA Diaries, an insider’s account of how she evolved from a child of immigrants drawn to the opportunities presented by the conservative machinery’s pipeline of scholarships into a skeptic of the choices offered to not just young people but also voters. I chatted by phone with the Puck News correspondent about her moorless political identity, her worries about a mismatched two-party system, and her hopes that conservatives might wrestle power away from the powerful MAGA movement.

Asked how she describes herself these days, she laughs. It’s a question she gets a lot on this book tour, she says. Finally, she takes a stab at it: “a quasi-libertarian, circa a much more innocent time in the country, before I realized that people have interests in power and sometimes they will go to great lengths to take those ideals and twist them in their own directions.” She goes on without missing a beat: “I wish I had a political ideology that I could slot myself into neatly in this environment. I'm just way too aware of the structure of the thing in order to say I feel comfortable being in this camp versus this camp.” That sounds like a whole lot of Americans, especially Republicans who this week seemed to send the MAGA Master himself coasting toward a third nomination in eight years.

The conversation has been edited and condensed.

TIME: Congratulations. This is a fun, if disturbing, read. I appreciate that you make a distinction from the start: there's MAGA; there's the conservative movement; and then there are Republicans. That nuance doesn't always come through in coverage. Why do you think they get lumped together so often?

Nguyen: As someone who came from conservative journalism and leapt right into being a mainstream journalist at an absurdly high level, I think people who end up in mainstream journalism don't come from a background where the distinctions between various genuses of conservatives are made evident. They'll have family members who are Republicans, but they don't know people who've entered professional conservatism, who have thought about the reasons that they are not voting for Democrats or progressives. Democrats are just, like: ‘Yeah, let's do a lot of things with government using the tools that have been established over centuries and centuries, and use that to move society forward.’ Republicans, conservatives, MAGA types all the same: ‘We do not like the way that government is run, and let's fix it.’

The issue of how they want to fix it is where you start seeing the distinction between Republicans, conservatives, and MAGA. Republicans use government to execute policies that they believe will result in conservative outcomes. Conservatives, starting with Reagan, actually adopted the conservative movement as their own. A lot of these were not his ideas.

He was like Trump that way.

Exactly. Reagan and the conservative movement he spearheaded were: ‘Let's get rid of government altogether. Reduce the role that it has in people's lives, cut back on the powers of agencies.’

MAGA is: ‘Screw this, we're burning it all down. We don't care how, we don't care how destructive it is.’ It's degrees of execution and destructive qualities that are the splits between the two.

You were there at the early days of MAGA. Could you imagine, or did you appreciate, what was being created then and the consequences that were coming? You write very openly about discovering a journalism mentor being a driving force behind a white supremacist email list, Morning Hate.

I genuinely believe that the vast majority of people who entered conservatism around the Tea Party era enjoyed the idea of the frumpy, fussy old Republican Party being left in the past. They saw a genuine moment to take the ideas of limited government, individual choice, personal liberty forward. That was certainly why I gravitated towards it.

But in that environment, there were a lot of actors who realized they could use the structure of the conservative movement to plant ideas inside the bloodstream and spread them even further. I would say [John] Elliott [,a former director of the journalism program at the libertarian Institute for Humane Studies and the Charlemagne Institute,] was one really terrifying example. I wasn't aware of it until all this news came out. A lot of people who came through that program weren't aware of it, but he didn't need all of us to get white nationalist ideas into conservatism. He just needed one or two people. And he found them and he cultivated them, and he sent them out into the world.

As much as I dislike talking about my ex-boyfriend, watching the trajectory of [MAGA “troll on steroids” and digital provocateur] Chuck Johnson from our time at Claremont McKenna was so illuminating—not just because he is a specific type of person with a certain set of beliefs, but because his behavior was permitted and encouraged along the way as long as it led to a proper outcome for powerful people such as Peter Thiel or Donald Trump or whoever in the Republican Party called upon him for his services . Now, people are backing away from him. But I don't think he would've gotten that far if it had not been for powerful people who found utility in his behavior.

You bring up Johnson here, and he's just one of the people who pepper this text. People whom Hillary Clinton would have labeled ‘deplorables.’ You worked for Tucker Carlson, did a stint in the Stephen Bannon orbit. You d an office with Matt Boyle . Do they actually believe this stuff, or are they just salesmen with a product that appeals to consumers who are hungry for it?

I think that binary is a little too simplistic. In 2010, people entered this world believing that the power of the conservative activist movement and network, and the ideas that were being traded through it, were powerful enough to sway the country in one direction. Then Trump came in and said: ‘Hey, what about populism?’ And a big section of the party was like: ‘Oh, actually, yes, we do like populism.’

And so everyone starts facing a choice. The conservative movement has turned into a career infrastructure that you start in as a young person and turn into your livelihood, your identity, your social circle, your reason for existence. And all of a sudden, do you take that value system that you hold so dear and say, ‘No, I don't want to go in this direction’? And then lose everything you've worked for? Or do you hold your nose and say: ‘All right, I'm doing this. There are parts of this that I actually kind of enjoy’? A lot of people have chosen the latter. I don't know what I would've done if I'd stayed in the movement when Trump came around. I was lucky enough to get out in 2012 and build a separate life of my own.

You write about one meeting in 2015 with Democratic leaders, in which you realize for the first time that the Left doesn't have that same pipeline and infrastructure that the Right does. Can you talk a little bit about your surprise there and what you've seen the Left try to do to compensate since then?

One of the things about growing up in that movement that I just took for granted was I see this structure working around me and I go: ‘Oh, this is the way things normally work. That's cool.’ Why is one party so disorganized, and the other one is extremely organized? And the answer I came to was the nature of the leaders of progressive movements and the Democratic Party, which is: We want change immediately.

One [Nebraska] woman I spoke to said they're obsessed with finding the shiny new thing nationally. And Republicans and conservatives, on the other hand, they've been building these networks since the Goldwater-era Leadership Institute. Mitch McConnell came out of it. Think about the idea of a 60- to 70-year plan.

I'm curious how much you think the structures of the MAGA movement are durable. Because the structures of the conservative movement have proven durable, but I'm not sure that there's any scaffolding around MAGA-ism. Are we just missing that?

There are certainly attempts to do that in the MAGA movement. There are actually dueling efforts between two think tanks that are trying to staff the next Trump administration. You've heard of Project 2025, primarily a Heritage Foundation project, and the America First Policy Institute, which is staffed almost exclusively with former Trump administration officials. AFPI was founded explicitly as a MAGA rejoinder to Heritage.

Does the MAGA movement last past Trump? Is this something that we're going to be talking about in 50, 60 years?

It doesn't unless Trump designates a successor. I don't think he will. It would have to be a direct order from Trump himself in order for that movement to survive.

The far Right has taken hold with younger voters in ways that I don't think a lot of people appreciate. I wonder if it's not a symptom of the environment on college campuses in recent years. Nothing builds unity like thinking you're in a bunker with your friends. Is that how MAGA superseded the Rove-type College Republicans on campus?

I would say so. There's always going to be that bunker mentality that conservatives on campus will feel.

One of the questions you ask a lot, and I don't know that we get a satisfactory answer, is: Who's picking up the tab for this conservative pipeline? It's easy to shorthand and say the Koch network, but that's not the whole story, is it?

No. And the Koch network is actually declining in actual influence on the Right. They can throw a lot of money into AFP and try to get it to move in one direction and try to bolster libertarian free market ideas, but the money doesn't actually work in populism. If anything, the idea of a wealthy billionaire trying to use his money to get people to vote against their own interest is anathema to a lot of voters these days.

The reason that I ended up in conservatism was literally because [conservative think tanks and journalism training programs] threw me a thousand dollars to work on some projects. There's someone bankrolling tons of operations, but you're not gonna’ see it in terms of giant donations to a think tank anymore, or boosting a certain candidate. It's all going to be little tiny micro transactions to networks of online influencers who will start tweeting about one thing or another.

So, Jan. 6, which you watched in close quarters. I'm wondering how that affected your approach to reporting on the movement. And then the follow-up is that you went out on a roadtrip and you describe it very cleverly as an AAPI de Tocqueville journey to better understand this country. I won't ruin the details for readers, but did you come back more or less depressed by the state of the country from that. What is your view of America having done Jan. 6 and done the road trip? Where are we as a country?

I think everyone's really scared. I think when you exist in Washington and you exist in New York, and you exist in these media circles for too long, you kind of forget that the machinations and insider gossip that you're hearing affects people far as away as like rural Washington, where I ended up at this random church that was called the Patriot Church. Everybody I talked to was like, ‘I have no idea what's going on. I am just terrified. I don't know what's true or not anymore.’ All of these people are angry. They always kept asking me: ‘Can you report the truth?’ And I was like, ‘I'm trying my best. guys.’

There is a hunger for stability and a knowledge of what is actually going on. And I also was struck that there can be trust in the media.

Finally, I have to appreciate that there are moments of levity throughout this and they're often coupled with your observations about your identity as a woman of color. How have you approached the contradictions in a lot of Americans’ minds that persons of color have to be liberals and the conservative side of the stadium is reserved for white voters?

That is such a wrong conception. That is absolutely not the case. In border towns, the Vietnamese community is so MAGA. Immigrants, especially those who have worked their way in as legally as possible and did a lot of work to make sure that they were safe here, are now being targeted by these disinformation campaigns specifically to warp their mind against Joe Biden. They're the same going on in Hispanic communities, communities like Venezuelans and Cubans who have looked at socialism in their own countries, and said: ‘What if that happened here? We really don't want that to happen here. Let's Make America Great Again.’

Immigrants—especially refugees—have a really deep-seated trauma about the causes that led to the instability in their own homelands and the forces that pushed them to leave. Too often it was based on socialist governments, and far too often they were targeted specifically because they had wealth or status, or were political dissidents. My parents were eating pumpkins for an entire year because the government was taking away their money. Liberals don’t quite understand. This is going to be a spicy take, but a lot of Democrats who are coming up with certain immigration policies do it from a place of academic, detached privilege.

ATTACHMENT EIGHT – FROM TIME

THE SURPRISING VOTERS DRIVING TRUMP TO VICTORY

BY PATRICK RUFFINI JANUARY 17, 2024 2:12 PM EST

After Republicans underperformed in the 2022 midterm elections, Donald Trump was a wounded animal. Trump-like candidates who parroted his claims about a stolen 2020 election went down to defeat. Meanwhile, Ron DeSantis—Trump’s main would-be rival for the nomination—won his own re-election race a thumping 19 points. DeSantis wasn’t alone in thinking Trump was beatable. Half a dozen others prepared bids of their own. For a brief moment, the post-Trump Republican future seemed at hand.

That window of opportunity would close as quickly as it opened. And after Trump’s victory in the Iowa caucuses, commanding a majority of the vote against a divided opposition, it seems unlikely to reopen. This is all very different from the free-for-all expected when DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and others stepped into the fray against a weakened Trump.

What happened? Memories of the midterm elections—more an obsession of political operatives than a concern of actual voters—faded quickly. Trump regained his footing. His team credits a February 2023 visit to working class East Palestine, Ohio—after a train derailment spilled toxic chemicals into the community—for helping him get his mojo back. He began going on offense against his rivals, principally DeSantis, while they sat on the sidelines lest they be drawn into a one-on-one fight. Then came the indictments—and Republican voters closed ranks.

Bolstering Trump’s surge in the primary polls were Joe Biden’s weak numbers. In 2016 and 2020, Trump almost never led in general election polling—which underestimated his performance both times. In 2023, he began to regularly beat Biden in head-to-head matchups. More than anything, this defanged the core electability argument made by Trump’s Republican rivals. If even an indicted Trump could beat Biden, why try something new? Why not just stick with a proven original, one whose primal instincts match perfectly with the Republican electorate’s anti-establishment fervor?

Given voter frustration about rising prices, Trump’s lead in the general election polls is not so surprising. What is surprising is the demographic coalition that’s arguably made him the general election frontrunner, strengthening his hand in the primary. Mainstays of the Democratic coalition—Black, Latino, and young voters—appear to be leaving Biden’s party in droves. Trump wins voters aged 18-29 in a few polls, despite losing them by 24 points in 2020. He’s reaching 20 percent among Black voters, a polling level without precedent for any Republican nominee in the last 40 years. And he continues to build on the gains he made among Hispanics in 2020.

Read More: Why the Primary Calendar Is Stacked in Trump's Favor

There’s a raging debate in polling-land about whether these numbers are to be believed. An outright Trump victory among young voters seems far-fetched, for instance. Nonetheless, I’m of the mind that these polls should be taken seriously, not literally, to borrow a phrase used to describe Trump’s appeal in 2016. They track with slow-motion trends already unfolding in the American electorate—a Latino zoom to the right in 2020 and a gradual erosion in Black voter support for Democrats. Underpinning these trends is a class role reversal from where the two parties stood in the 20th century, when Democrats were unambiguously the party of the poor and the working class across racial lines, and Republicans were most often identified with big business and the wealthy. Trump may have perfectly embodied this old Republican stereotype, but under his watch, the party now has more people in it on the bottom half of the economic ladder, without college diplomas. This is a net positive for the GOP’s ability to win elections in the future, given that more than 6 in 10 voters don’t have a college degree.

Trump upended the traditional party alignment in 2016 with a cultural appeal to white working class voters that simultaneously repulsed the denizens of America’s upper-income, college-educated suburbs. This continued in 2020, when Trump’s working class coalition was joined by millions of nonwhite voters, while Democrats continued to count more of the college educated in their ranks.

But after eight years of Trump, cultural topics feel played out a driver of voting behavior. Yes, they’ve polarized the electorate in new ways, with Republicans more competitive in the Rust Belt and Democrats in the Sun Belt. But what’s different in 2024 is an election playing out under an umbrella of economic anxiety. And that’s pushing more working class voters into Trump’s camp—especially nonwhite voters commonly aligned with the Democratic Party.

Compared to 2020, Trump is stronger and Biden weaker among voters making under $50,000 a year, non-college graduates, voters under 30, and racial and ethnic minorities. And the groups at the margins of today’s economy are the groups that inflation has hit the hardest. And though price hikes may have eased recently, what voters are thinking about most is the cumulative toll of inflation—20 percent in just three years.

The White House’s strategy seems to be to hope for good economic news to displace the bad, pivoting in the meantime to non-economic issues like abortion rights and democracy. In their view, that’s a tried-and-true formula that in 2022 saved a number of suburban districts that over-index for college graduates. The problem is that these issues are further down the priority list with diverse lower-income communities who wonder if they’ll have enough to cover next month’s bills. These tend to be the voters who show up in presidential—but not midterm elections—and their strong showing for Trump in recent polls is upending traditional ideas about who benefits from expanded turnout in lower-income and minority communities.

The larger concern for Biden is the perception that his leadership style is too small, too slow—and yes, too old. Stylistically, Biden is a poor fit for younger voters who initially flocked to the party when Barack Obama was its standard-bearer. Other voters simply want energy in the executive: action to tackle rising prices or fix the border. And the current version of Joe Biden doesn’t seem like a man of action—not in the way Trump does. In open-ended responses from voters, Biden’s age readily translated to the idea he is too weak to tackle the pressures of the presidency for four more years. The steadiness that was his strength in 2020 now reads as lethargy—and for all the noise and chaos of the Trump years, the economy seemed to be on more stable footing. For the voters at the bottom that need relief the most, that’s translating to an unexpected political shift.

ATTACHMENT NINE – FROM THE GUARDIAN U.K.

‘HE WINS BIG’: TRUMP TAKES THE REPUBLICAN REINS IN HIS QUEST FOR RE-ELECTION

For some Americans, it’s a nightmare from which they cannot wake, but for others it’s a new chapter in the Maga saga

By David Smith Tue 16 Jan 2024 01.19 EST

There is a familiar scene in many a film where the protagonist jolts awake from a terrible nightmare, only to realise that he or she didn’t wake up at all: the nightmare continues.

For the millions of Americans who abhor Donald Trump, there was a similar sensation on Monday night as the former US president swaggered out on stage in Des Moines, having just scored a resounding victory in the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses.

It was an eerie replay of 2016 and all those shocking nights when reality TV star Trump won primaries and eventually the presidency. It was as if the coronavirus pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests, the defeat by Joe Biden, the January 6 insurrection and the 91 charges across four criminal cases had all been a fever dream.

“It was a profoundly depressing night,” Tim Miller, former communications director for Jeb Bush 2016, told the MSNBC network. “Donald Trump attempted a coup three years ago and he is on a glide path to the biggest blowout in a presidential contest in any of our lives.”

Trump won big in Iowa. With an estimated 99% of the vote counted, Trump was at 51%, meaning that he had more support than all other candidates combined despite scarcely campaigning there. It was easily the biggest ever victory by a Republican in the Iowa causes. The icing on the cake was Trump-lite Ron DeSantis’s second place finish at 21.2%, blunting the charge of Nikki Haley with 19.1% ahead of the New Hampshire primary.

Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist, tweeted: “Trump could not have gotten a better night out of Iowa. He wins big, his most lethal opponent gets squelched into third place, damping her momentum.”

Democrats seize on Iowa results to campaign onthreats posed by Trump

The former president’s victory confirmed the worst-kept secret in politics: he is master and commander of the Republican party. Kamikaze candidates such as Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson tried and failed to take him down. Others, like DeSantis and Haley, found that mostly ignoring the frontrunner was no way to beat him either.

The result came so quickly that not many people had yet gathered at Trump’s election watch party in Des Moines. There was no great cheer to celebrate the moment. But soon hundreds of Trump supporters came to the cavernous hall at the Iowa Events Center, many sporting “Maga” regalia, partaking of beer and popcorn that the organizers provided.

“It’s like a January 6 reunion,” one journalist observed wryly.

The crowd included new stars of the Maga universe: the Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, Texas congressman Ronny Jackson, British demagogue Nigel Farage and far-right activist Laura Loomer.

Some may be angling for jobs in a second Trump administration, one that might make his first cabinet look like a model of professionalism and propriety.

The ex-president walked onstage to whoops and cheers, accompanied by sons Don Jr and Eric but not wife Melania or daughters Ivanka or Tiffany. Above him were two giant screens that proclaimed “Trump wins Iowa!” in white capital letters on a black background. Numerous stars-and-stripes flags completed the backdrop. The lectern said: “Trump: Make America great again.”

Trump began his speech in unusually magnanimous fashion but soon indicated that he thinks the nomination is wrapped up and he is looking ahead to November. He said, “We’re going to drill baby drill,” and the crowd roared.

He went on, “We’re going to seal up the border,” and again the crowd roared. “Now we have an invasion – millions and millions of people that are coming into our country.”

Trump moved on to bashing Biden. “I don’t want to be overly rough on the president, but I have to say he is the worst president we ever had in the history of our country … Jimmy Carter is happy now because he will go down as being a brilliant president by comparison to Joe Biden.”

But for all the Maga grotesques in the room, perhaps there was no more significant figure on stage than Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, the first Republican primary candidate to drop out and endorse Trump.

The former president thanked him. Then came the tell: “He’s one of the best governors in our country and I hope that I’m going to be able to call on you to be a piece of the administration, a very important piece of the administration.”

It was another chilling echo of 2016 when, one by one, Trump’s opponents and critics buckled and backed him, often because they saw it as a pathway to power. Once again, the Republican party is bending to the will of the brash would-be authoritarian.

Trump clearly feels more comfortable running as an insurgent than an incumbent. He wants to turn back the clock to 2016 rather than 2020. Is Joe Biden doomed to be Hillary Clinton, or can he be Joe Biden again?

ATTACHMENT TEN – FROM THE GUARDIAN U.K.

TRUMP’S IOWA WIN MARKS A COMEBACK FOR HIM AND A STEP BACKWARDS FOR THE COUNTRY

In the end, Iowa, as was much predicted, went for the original packaging – by a landslide

Arwa Mahdawi, Lloyd Green, Bhaskar Sunkara, Ben Davis and Geoffrey Kabaservice Mon 15 Jan 2024 23.55 EST

Arwa Mahdawi: an incredible comeback for Trump

The Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, who was in Iowa on Monday night as a surrogate for the Biden-Harris campaign, may have summed up the night the best. “Tonight’s contest,” Pritzker said, “is simply a question of whether you like your Maga Trump agenda wrapped in the original packaging, or with high heels or lifts in their boots”.

There were no meaningful differences between the three frontrunners (Trump, Ron “rumoured to wear leg-lengthening lifts” DeSantis, and Nikki Haley). And, in the end, Iowa, as was much predicted, went for the original packaging – by a landslide.

So does this mean Trump is a shoo-in for the Republican nominee? Not necessarily. There have been numerous instances where the winner of the Iowa caucus isn’t the eventual nominee – including 2016, when Ted Cruz won. Still, Trump’s victory on Monday night makes it increasingly likely that 2024 is going to be a Biden-Trump rematch. And this, let us not forget, is despite the fact that Trump is facing 91 felony counts in four separate cases covering everything from conspiring to overturn the 2020 election to falsifying records in connection to hush money paid to an adult film star. Oh, and let’s not forget that last year a New York jury found Trump guilty of sexually abusing the advice columnist E Jean Carroll. However, it seems none of that is a deal-breaker for the Republican voters in Iowa.

All in all? Monday night marked an incredible comeback for the disgraced former president and an enormous step backwards for the country.

· Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian US columnist

Lloyd Green: ‘Nikki Haley is too out of touch to win’

Donald Trump romped to victory in the Iowa caucus. Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis vie for a distant second. Haley may best Trump in next week’s New Hampshire primary, but she won’t derail him. Her candidacy is a magnet for disaffected Republicans and high-end independents, constituencies too small to matter in this year’s nominating process but who may determine the outcome of the general election.

She is the wine-track candidate in a Joe Six-pack Republican party, out of step with the party’s working-class and white evangelical base. Her backers emphatically oppose a national six-week abortion ban, which Iowa Republicans embrace. In a similar vein, a majority of Haley voters believe Joe Biden legitimately won in 2020, placing them at odds with the rest of caucusgoers.

As ever, class and culture count. Haley nearly matched Trump with college graduates. By contrast, she only eked out the support of one in eight voters without a four-year degree. Jesus and Nascar get you the “W” in Trump-centric Iowa. Pearls and garden parties, not so much.

Looking ahead, a Trump loss in New Hampshire would be a mere speed bump. In 2000, George W Bush won Iowa, slipped in New Hampshire, then rallied in South Carolina. He never looked back. This year, Haley trails Trump by nearly 30 points in South Carolina, her home.

Meanwhile, the 45th president’s legal woes remain the soundtrack of 2024’s political calendar. In the coming hours, his latest defamation trial will kick off in Manhattan. His sexual assault of E Jean Carroll haunts decades later.

· Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992

Bhaskar Sunkara: ‘Trump will remain unstoppable’

Of course Donald Trump won big today. He’s running for the candidacy of a Republican party that he’s all but created.

Some in the Trump 2016 campaign such as Steve Bannon wanted to realign American politics in a new way: to win so decisively among (particularly white) working-class voters to permanently change the electoral map. For the moment, at least, they failed in their ambitions. Rhetoric and disregard for institutional order aside, on the policy front Trump governed more like a business Republican and less like populist firebrand. But it’s clear that he did permanently change the Republican party.

Trump’s style – his personal attacks on opponents, railings against establishment media, attacks on the “deep state” and the election system itself – all built on existing trends within the Republican party, but he took them to new extremes and made personal loyalty to his brand a litmus test in the party.

He’s done to his party something very unusual in American politics. Instead of hobbling together a loose coalition like Joe Biden, Trump made the Republicans a coherent, largely unified entity, bound together by a worldview and a leader.

Iowa’s results make it plainly clear that Trump will remain unstoppable in Republican primaries unless he’s kept off ballots by the courts. Outside of the judicial system there is no elite media or RNC cabal nearly strong enough to defeat him.

· Bhaskar Sunkara is the president of the Nation, the founding editor of Jacobin, and the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequalities

Ben Davis: ‘This is a race in name only’

The Iowa caucuses show what we all knew: this year’s Republican primary is a race in name only. Trump’s landslide victory felt inevitable and was even bigger than most expected. He was able to win without participating in debates or even running much of a primary-focused campaign, preferring to act as if he was already the nominee.

Most Americans are barely aware there’s even a primary race going on. Caucus turnout has plummeted since 2016. It is hard to imagine a scenario in which Trump fails to win the Republican nomination. He’s already led a coup attempt, been indicted with dozens of counts of various felonies and even compared his views on immigrants to Hitler’s. It hasn’t hurt his standing with Republicans at all.

While the Iowa caucuses, with their social pressure, heavily white and evangelical electorate, and brutal negative temperatures, are particularly friendly to Trump, there’s very little chance he has to break a sweat to win the nomination. Under the hood, the caucus results show the Republican base is still divided and changing.

In heavily college-educated areas, Trump’s vote plummeted. While this matters little in the Republican primary, it’s a sign that Trump could still struggle to win even Republican-leaning voters in the general election in highly educated areas. These are voters who, unlike millions of others, still haven’t been alienated enough to stop caucusing in the Republican primary, and even still, they reject Trump. It remains to be seen if the unpopular Biden can do enough to win these voters back over.

This primary race that never took off serves as yet another rebuke of the wealthy elites in the Republican party, who have used the party as a vehicle to promote market-friendly policy above all else. They poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the Ron DeSantis campaign, and the results were a spectacular failure. It’s not their party anymore. The Republican party is now a vehicle primarily for the politics of cultural grievance and petty reaction.

· Ben Davis works in political data in Washington DC. He worked on the data team for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign

Geoffrey Kabaservice: ‘It’s impossible to out-Trump Trump’

Anyone surprised by Donald Trump’s blowout victory in the Iowa Republican caucuses shouldn’t have been. The other candidates’ failure to criticize him in any meaningful way amounted to a pre-emptive surrender to his brand of populism, and the election results showed that it’s impossible to out-Trump Trump. In fact, dislodging Trump was always going to be enormously difficult because he has remade not only the Republican party but Republican voters themselves.

Trump lost the Iowa caucuses in 2016 – finishing behind Ted Cruz and barely ahead of Marco Rubio – because enough voters still believed in other versions of the Republican party, whether represented by the muscular internationalism and sunny optimism of a Ronald Reagan or the pious evangelicalism and fiscal austerity of a Mike Pence. Now Trump has persuaded a critical mass of those same voters to reject the beliefs they once held, on issues ranging from free trade to international alliances to constitutional democracy. Many would deny they ever believed otherwise.

In hindsight, Ron DeSantis might have been a more formidable contender if he’d made a stronger claim to represent conservative competence in government; Nikki Haley for her part might have more forcefully argued against Maga isolationism. But they only could have displaced Trump by demanding that Republicans reject him along with much of what he stands for – by arguing for example that his election denialism and role in the January 6 insurrection made him unfit for office.

But that would have risked splitting the party, and Trump is the only figure in the Republican party who has been willing to take that risk – perhaps because he understands that absolute control over a thing derives from a willingness to utterly destroy it, to paraphrase Frank Herbert’s Dune. Perhaps Trump also understands the other candidates better than they understand themselves. As he is reported to have said of other would-be challengers and holdouts in the Republican party: “They always bend the knee.”

· Geoffrey Kabaservice is the director of political studies at the Niskanen Center in Washington DC as well as the author of Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party

@A lobsterpot of liberals!

ATTACHMENT ELEVEN – FROM THE GUARDIAN U.K.

TRUMP DOUBLED HIS VOTING BASE IN IOWA. HERE’S WHO VOTED FOR HIM

Church leaders in 2016 crafted a palatable Trump – in return, he gave them institutional power and a supreme court that overturned Roe

By Alice Herman Wed 17 Jan 2024 06.00 EST

Iowa Republicans showed up on 15 January in force for Donald Trump, voting overwhelmingly in the nation’s first primary for the former president, whose grip on his party has only deepened as he weathers numerous lawsuits and 91 felony charges relating to his business dealings and involvement in attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The Iowa caucuses confirmed polls that have consistently shown Trump carrying a comfortable lead ahead of the remaining Republican challengers.

Before the caucuses, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, repeatedly reminded voters and the press that he had toured all of Iowa’s 99 counties. Trump won 98 of them. With the exception of college graduates and voters under 30, who for the most part caucused for DeSantis or the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, most other demographic groups reported strong support for Trump this year.

Even young Republican voters favored Trump slightly more strongly this year than in the 2016 Iowa caucuses: CNN entrance polls showed a modest 3% jump in caucus-goers under 30 who support Trump, while his of supporters over the age of 30 nearly doubled across the board.

Since 2016, Trump has consolidated support among evangelical Christian voters, a key block in Iowa. Just over 20% of Trump’s Iowa supporters in 2016 self-reported as evangelicals or born-again Christians; evangelicals made up 53% of his supporters in 2024 Iowa polling.

Support for Trump among evangelical Christians can be chalked up to “transactional politics” said Anne Nelson, author of Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right.

Their support may be puzzling on the surface – Trump, a philandering and corrupt adulterer twice divorced who is not particularly religious, would seem an unlikely candidate for wide support from the devout. But behind the scenes, leaders in the evangelical movement, including influential members of the Southern Baptist church, struck a deal with Trump in 2016. In exchange for the support and endorsements of church leaders, Trump would afford evangelicals institutional power in his administration. Through an evangelical advisory board, they would help set social policy and do whatever they could to end the legal right to abortion.

Leaders in the church, in exchange, crafted a message that would make Trump more palatable to members.

To evangelicals, “Trump was not a man of God,” said Nelson. “He was an instrument of God, like King Cyrus, the Persian king in the Bible.”

The bargain held: Trump won the support of evangelical voters and then delivered to them a supreme court that overturned Roe v Wade, erasing nearly 50 years of legal precedent that guaranteed the right to abortion.

And despite political divisions among prominent pastors in Iowa, support for Trump among evangelical voters increased this year.

The Iowa primary may be a reasonable bellwether for evangelical support for him – and as far as it served as a litmus test for Republican party polling, the polling held up. But Iowa’s primary is atypical.

Iowa is more racially homogeneous than the rest of the US – more than 85% of Iowans identify as white, and Black people make up only about 4% of the population, compared with the national average of 71% and 12%. While Black men across the US have increasingly reported supporting Trump in polling, there were so few non-white Republican caucus-goers that entrance polling did not register them as a statistically significant bloc.

The Republican caucuses are also party meetings, requiring party membership to participate and consisting of an exclusively in-person vote.

The time commitment, the fact that caucuses also involve Republican party business, and even the extreme cold in Iowa this week probably affected turnout, which was estimated at 110,000 voters, significantly lower than 2016.

“The proportion of rank-and-file Republicans who are going to participate in the caucuses would be fewer than in a typical primary,” said Barbara Trish, a professor of political science at Grinnell College in Iowa.

“The smaller the core of participants, the more likely they are to be more ideologically extreme, or more, on average, experienced and active in the party.”

The next stop to test the strength and growth of Trump’s base is New Hampshire, which is also demographically less diverse than most of the country and thus not representative of what the US election as a whole will look like.

Even so, Trump is predicted to win the state, further cement his monopoly of the party, and box out those who threaten it.

ATTACHMENT TWELVE – FROM the WASHINGTON POST

‘ORDAINED BY GOD’: TRUMP’S LEGAL PROBLEMS GALVANIZE IOWA EVANGELICALS

By Meryl Kornfield, Colby Itkowitz, Hannah Knowles and Marianne LeVine

Updated January 14, 2024 at 1:34 p.m. EST|Published January 14, 2024 at 5:00 a.m. EST

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — “Billboard” Bob Klaus, a retired advertising salesman wearing a red, signed Donald Trump baseball cap and Trump socks to match his star spangled leather jacket and American flag cross necklace, said he lives in a house divided.

Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter.

Klaus, a self-described evangelical Christian who hosts Good Friday prayer breakfasts, said his wife was considering backing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in Monday’s Iowa caucuses, but later leaned toward entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

As for him?

“It’s Trump,” said Klaus.

For Klaus, who echoed many other Iowa Republicans, the decision came down in part to Trump’s Supreme Court picks, which led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and his alignment with some Christian leaders. But Trump’s current legal problems — 91 criminal charges across four indictments including allegations involving paying hush money to an adult-film star and trying to overturn the 2020 election — along with his fight against what he calls the “deep state,” prompted Klaus to liken him to David in his fight against Goliath.

“That’s why we as Republicans have to come together and stand behind him,” said Klaus.

For years, White conservative evangelicals have played a crucial role in determining who wins the Republican caucuses that kick off the nominating process. And this year, they are showing strong support for Trump, according to interviews with Republican voters, strategists and Christian leaders across the state. The decision in some ways reflects a shift from the kind of late-breaking underdog candidates they have embraced in the past, who had deeper roots in Christian churches, and Trump’s enduring dominance across much of the GOP spectrum.

In several ways, Trump is an unlikely hero for those who identify as deeply religious Christians given his history of committing adultery, promoting falsehoods, and uttering vulgar comments and insults about women and people who cross him. But many have overlooked these indiscretions and questionable morals.

“The support has gone from begrudging to enthusiastic. Many evangelicals now see Trump as their champion and defender — perhaps even savior,” said Barry Hankins, a history professor at Baylor University who is an expert in evangelicalism. “Unwittingly, in my view, many evangelicals are welcoming authoritarianism and courting blasphemy.”

Evangelicals made up two-thirds of Republican caucus-goers in 2016, when Trump fell just short in Iowa to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who anchored his campaign in deep outreach to the evangelical community and claimed a plurality of support from born-again or evangelical Christians, according to network entrance polls. Cruz was another example of an insurgent campaign that surged late with the support of Christian conservatives, including some influential Iowa Christian leaders, coming after similar victories by Rick Santorum in 2012 and Mike Huckabee in 2008.

In those contests, however, evangelical voters were more evenly divided than they have appeared to be this year in the run-up to the caucuses. Cruz won 34 percent of their vote and Santorum captured 32 percent. Huckabee had a larger consolidation and won 46 percent of evangelical Christians.

But this time around, they have largely lined up behind the candidate in Trump who has long been the favorite here. And in large measure, the reasons they stand behind him are the reasons much of the rest of his base does, including Trump’s claims, without evidence, that he is the target of a politically motivated attack through the justice system.

Steve Scheffler, president of the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, said that Trump’s description of the Justice Department and other government agencies as being weaponized against him resonates with evangelicals who feel as if the federal government “a lot of times, is not their friend.”

Congregation members pray during service at the First Church of God on Jan. 7 in Des Moines. (Charlie Neibergall/AP)

DeSantis has tried the blueprint of the past three Iowa winners in open races — none of whom went on to win the nomination. He and his wife, Casey DeSantis, have crisscrossed the state visiting churches on Sundays. He embraced polarizing debates on social issues, passing a six-week abortion ban in Florida and curbing discussion of LGBTQ+ issues in schools. He won the coveted endorsement of Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats, head of the Family Leader.

Trump’s pull is evident even in some of the efforts DeSantis’s evangelical allies are waging to boost him. Vander Plaats, who has been highly critical of Trump, wrote in an op-ed that “caucusing for Ron DeSantis is a good way to be a friend to Donald Trump.” In the piece, Vander Plaats argues that DeSantis is better positioned to fight the “bureaucracy” and that “a DeSantis presidency ensures justice for Trump.”

A Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa poll released Saturday showed Trump leading among evangelicals with 51 percent support, compared with 22 percent for DeSantis and 12 percent for Haley. A survey in early December from the same newspaper and its partners found a similar breakdown. In that same survey, most respondents said that the Vander Plaats endorsement didn’t matter.

Standing outside a commit-to-caucus rally in Clinton, Iowa, recently, Paul Figie, a pastor and a Trump caucus captain, said Trump is “ordained by God.” He pointed to how he has seen Trump as being mistreated by the justice system and Democrats, equating the former president to a martyr. He dismissed the viability of other candidates, saying he was convinced that a higher power would put Trump back in office.

“Trump is the guy to be in there, and amen,” he said.

Trump has accused the Biden administration of discriminating against people of faith, suggesting at a campaign event in Waterloo, Iowa, that “Christians and Americans of faith are being persecuted and government has been weaponized against religion like never before.” Fact-checkers, however, have debunked that claim. Experts on religious liberty, such as John Inazu from Washington University in St. Louis, cite multiple major religion-related Supreme Court cases and say religious freedom is perhaps more protected than ever.

Trump has leaned into biblical comparisons. He recently d on Truth Social a nearly three-minute-long video depicting him as a messiah — and played it at a rally. A narrator intones that “on June 14, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker,’ so God gave us Trump” as a baby picture of Trump fills the screen.

Some evangelicals in Iowa found the video distasteful and criticized the former president for promoting it.

“That upset a lot of people, including myself, because Trump isn’t our messiah, and he’s not heir apparent,” said Michael Demastus, a pastor of the Fort Des Moines Church of Christ, who has not revealed who he is supporting, but said it would not be Trump.

Iowa Senate President Amy Sinclair, who has endorsed DeSantis, was also critical of the video.

“If you have to make yourself into a Christian by making a video, then you’re probably trying too hard,” she said. “Maybe you should just act like one instead.”

Demastus and Sinclair also argued that Trump alienated evangelicals in Iowa when he called the state’s six-week abortion ban “terrible.”

“That’s just a slap in the face to the people of the state of Iowa who frankly launched him in 2016,” Sinclair said.

Many of Trump’s critics here believe DeSantis will do well with devout evangelicals, but that more casual worshipers who identify as evangelical will gravitate to Trump. Strategists with the pro-DeSantis super PAC Never Back Down, which has effectively been running DeSantis’s field operation in Iowa, have tracked voters’ faith habits in great detail and have long argued Iowa is favorable territory for DeSantis in part because of high levels of “Bible reading.”

Meanwhile Haley, who is competing with DeSantis to be the main Trump alternative, is less of a natural fit for conservative evangelical voters in Iowa, especially because she’s seen as being wishy-washy over her support for a national abortion ban. (Haley has said she would sign a federal abortion ban if one was passed by Congress, but she reiterated that the odds of that happening are slim given a lack of consensus.) But she has won some support of notable evangelical leaders in the state, including Marlys Popma, a former president of Iowa Right to Life who said in a new ad that Haley will “keep the radical left from ruining our culture” and “won’t let boys play girls’ sports.”

“Nikki is a sister in Christ,” Popma says in the spot running in Iowa.

At the New Hope Assembly of God, a Des Moines suburb church that attracts thousands of attendees weekly, Pastor James Weaver said he will caucus for Haley. Weaver, who founded the church over 30 years ago, said he’s drawn to Haley because of her foreign policy experience and her potential electability in a general election.

Chip Saltsman, a GOP consultant who ran Huckabee’s 2008 presidential campaign, said evangelical voters often are depicted as only caring about issues of faith, but said that like other voters, they also care about the economy and world events.

“I think some campaigns make the mistake of putting the evangelical voters in this box that only care about pro-life issues or the Supreme Court. There’s a lot more to that group of voters than just that,” he said. “Now, don’t get me wrong, that’s motivated them. It’s important to them. It’s a moral issue. It’s political, all that is true, but there’s more to them than that.”

On a recent Sunday outside Walnut Creek Church in downtown Des Moines, Mark McColley, 71, explained why he is backing Trump.

“I am very disappointed that this country has been so brutal on Donald Trump,” he said. “It’s really brutalized him for the last six to eight years. And I don’t think that that’s warranted. I think he cares about this country. And I think that’s an important thing that we need to have.”

Itkowitz reported from Washington. Knowles reported from Iowa. LeVine reported from Des Moines. Scott Clement and Michelle Boorstein in Washington contributed to this report.

ATTACHMENT THIRTEEN – FROM WASHPOST

OPINION -  IOWA NUDGED THE NATION CLOSER TO A REVOLTING REMATCH NEXT FALL

By George F. Will January 16, 2024 at 5:13 p.m. EST

A small minority of Iowa’s tiny minority (0.96 percent) of the U.S. population has spoken. Next week, a portion of New Hampshire’s 0.42 percent will speak. By Feb. 24, when South Carolina (1.63 percent) will be heard from, these three states might have consigned the other 97 percent of Americans to a November choice that disgusts a whopping majority.

Writing in National Affairs, Wheaton College political scientists Bryan T. McGraw and Timothy W. Taylor say that in 2016, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump “had the lowest favorability of any candidates in presidential polling history.” Eight years later, a Biden-Trump rematch probably would establish a new low.

Iowa gave Trump the outcome he probably wanted. The icing on his Iowa cake — he won 97 of 99 counties by at least 10 points — was Nikki Haley’s failure to finish off Ron DeSantis’s campaign. The former South Carolina governor might have done this if 2,500 more voters had propelled her past him into second place, which would have bolstered her claim that it is now a two-person race.

It actually is. Her chance of stopping Trump is substantially better than that of DeSantis, whose mistaken assumption has been that the Republican nominating electorate wants a less feral, more pastel version of Trump. This electorate wants a brawler, which DeSantis is, but it will not embrace a less entertaining incarnation of today’s political tribalism.

The justices will keep Trump on the ballot. Here’s how (and why) they’ll do...

Thirty-five states, with 63 percent of the nation’s population, have voted for the same party in this century’s six elections. Political competition is so suspended, like a fly in amber, that ticket-splitting is rare: Only 3 percent of 2020 voters supported a presidential candidate from one party and a House or Senate candidate from the other. In 2016 and 2020, 66 of 67 Senate elections were won by the candidate of the party whose presidential candidate carried the state.

More than half of the 1,215 convention delegates needed to secure the GOP nomination will be allocated on March 5, 10 days after South Carolina’s primary. By limping on for six more weeks, DeSantis complicates Haley’s task of deflating Trump by defeating him in her home state.

Trump’s cascading legal distractions, driven by progressive prosecutors, have strengthened his grip on his party. If, however, Trump is inaugurated 371 days after Monday’s Iowa caucuses, progressives will have accomplished perhaps the largest self-inflicted wound in U.S. political history.

The second-worst news drenching President Biden’s campaign is: Although no Republican presidential candidate has won among voters under 30 since 1988, the New York Times-Siena College poll last month showed Trump leading Biden with that cohort 49 percent to 43 percent, a 10-point swing since July. Even worse news for Biden is this:

A USA Today-Suffolk University poll finds his support among Black voters at 63 percent, a 24-point collapse since 2020. In 1964, four months after achieving enactment of the Civil Rights Act, Lyndon B. Johnson won 94 percent of the Black vote, 26 points better than John F. Kennedy’s 1960 percentage. In the subsequent 14 elections, no Democratic nominee has received less than Jimmy Carter’s 83 percent in 1976, and Democratic candidates have averaged 85 percent.

Writing in National Affairs, Boston College political scientists Dennis Hale and Marc Landy say: “Polarization is largely a response by part of the electorate to the reality that the mass media and the nation’s major cultural and educational institutions are largely controlled by, or operate for the benefit of, a very different part of the electorate.” This perception is reinforced by ham-handed progressive tactics that impart momentum to Trump’s grievance tour.

Before the Supreme Court ends this mischief, let’s end applause for grandstanding officials in blue states who ban Trump from ballots on the ground that the 14th Amendment makes him ineligible because on Jan. 6, 2021, he participated in an “insurrection.” Stretching that concept enough to disqualify the man currently leading him in polls, Biden, in a statement remarkably silly even considering the source, said that on Jan. 6 “we nearly lost America — lost it all.” Oh? A rabble’s four-hour tantrum, which briefly delayed the certification of the 2020 election, nearly did what four years of Confederate military campaigning could not do?

The Congress that, a year after Appomattox, selected the word “insurrection” surely was thinking of such concerted attempts to smash the national regime. Until there is something comparable, let’s agree that the last person disqualified by Section 3 died at 104 in 1951. His name was — really — Pleasant Crump, the last known surviving Confederate soldier.

ATTACHMENT FOURTEEN – FROM TIME

WHY THE PRIMARY CALENDAR IS STACKED IN TRUMP’S FAVOR

BY PHILIP ELLIOTT JANUARY 16, 2024 3:03 PM EST

As Nikki Haley raced to catch her overnight charter from Des Moines to Manchester, her team kept double-checking the numbers. The former South Carolina Governor and ex-Ambassador to the United Nations had posted a disappointing third-place finish in Iowa’s lead-off caucus on Monday, but the result doesn’t much alter the math that really matters: the chase for 1,215 delegates to the nominating convention in Milwaukee come July. As the wind raged outside their mini-motorcade, aides confirmed that the deflating results in Iowa had netted them seven of Iowa’s 40 delegates—just one fewer than won by silver medalist Ron DeSantis. Haley’s team was preparing for the long trek to New Hampshire’s North Country on Tuesday to show she was all-in on the Granite State.

For now Trump’s blowout victory shapes the narrative, as will the New Hampshire results on Jan. 23. But both are small prizes from a delegate perspective. Iowa offers less than 2% of the total delegates on the table for White House hopefuls. Polls show Haley has a shot at New Hampshire, which would, at least temporarily, end talk that the race is over as soon as it began. But New Hampshire offers just 22 seats on the convention floor. After that comes Nevada, whose 26 delegates, like Iowa and New Hampshire’s, are awarded proportionally; you get your if you credibly show. 

But that’s where the rules of the nominating contest grow increasingly friendly to the frontrunner. At Trump’s behest, Nevada Republicans passed a rule that blocks super PACs like the one doing a heavy lift for DeSantis’ day-to-day operations from being in the mix. The party also will now offer delegates through a caucus rather than a primary, a change seen as a favor to hardcore activists over casual voters. These were among the many insider-driven tweaks the Trump campaign has put in place nationwide as an insurance policy. (As of now, Haley isn’t even on the caucus ballot in order to show support for the party-run affair. She will instead appear on the symbolic primary ballot that offers no delegates.) Both New Hampshire and Nevada award delegates proportionally: New Hampshire has treats for candidates topping 10%, while Nevada has a threshold of 4%.

But starting with South Carolina and its 50 delegates, winner-take-all rules kick in. Second place in a lot of these early-nominating contests still amounts to First Loser. Idaho (March 2), Michigan (February 27 and March 2), and North Dakota (March 4) are all set up so the winner gets most of the delegates. In Idaho, for instance, any candidate getting above 50% gets the whole pot of 32 delegates. In Michigan, too, there are new party rules that set up a two-step process for picking up delegates; the change is widely seen as a pro-Trump move given his allies control the state political machinery and could summarily block rivals’ access to the process. Unlike eight years ago, Trump now has party insiders minding the stores to keep the process tilted in his favor. 

Come Super Tuesday on March 5, things get even tougher for runners-up. Of the 15 states (plus American Samoa) having nominating contests that day, just two have plausible ways for non-winners to gain a meaningful number of delegates: Alaska and Colorado. (Of note: it’s not clear Trump will even be on Colorado’s ballot.) In others, there are provisions in state party rules that candidates topping 50% of the vote take home the lion’s , setting up massive gains. For the first time, California’s 169 delegates will be awarded to the winner statewide and not by congressional district during a primary that leapfrogged ahead to offer a huge boost to its winner. Trump’s team was instrumental in this shift. 

Running the table on Super Tuesday, when 874 delegates are on the table, can get a candidate 72% of the way to the total required for the nomination. Trump’s own internal projections have him in a position to win the nomination a week later.

The upshot is that the long-nurtured hopes of the Never Trump Republicans—defeat the former President by finally getting him one-on-one—doesn’t look like a recipe for success, if even it were possible. In a two-way race, the math just doesn’t work for the underdogs. The rules of the 2024 nominating contest are not meant to encourage also-rans from sticking around to pick up a delegate here or there. In 2016, the GOP watched as Trump slogged to the nomination with the likes of Ted Cruz nipping at him and threatening a delegate mutiny. Mitt Romney did the same four years earlier as a stubborn Rick Santorum kept peeling-off wins in states like Colorado and Tennessee. This time, the rules regime was meant to deliver Republicans a nominee as bloodlessly as possible. And they may work with admirable efficiency this year. The Iowa landslide led Trump to gently call on rivals to give up. But for now, the delegate race is anyone’s ballgame. Trump is up by 12 delegates over DeSantis and 13 over Haley. (Even fourth-place Iowa finisher Vivek Ramaswamy hobbled out of Iowa with three delegates—and an invitation to join Trump in New Hampshire for campaign stops this week as a dropout.) DeSantis framed a distant second-place in Iowa as a victory; Haley, despite coming in third, cast herself as the second half of a two-candidate race. But eventually, this narrative-shaping must give way to math, and the magic number of 1,215 has to be atop strategy sessions. And with the rules stacked in Trump’s favor as the primary goes on, it may not be long before both have hard choices to face.

ATTACHMENT FIFTEEN – FROM THE GUARDIAN U.K.

IOWA CAUCUS KEY TAKEAWAYS: TRUMP’S HOLD ON REPUBLICANS IS CLEAR BUT SECOND PLACE ISN’T

Donald Trump won early and Ron DeSantis’s investment in Iowa paid off but Nikki Haley has focused more on New Hampshire

Tue 16 Jan 2024 00.19 EST

The Iowa caucuses took place on Martin Luther King Jr Day, a national holiday, while a raging winter storm swept through the region.

But still many Iowans made it to their precinct to cast their vote in the first Republican state primary of the 2024 election year.

Within half an hour of the caucuses starting, all major news outlets projected Donald Trump as winner. While the Trump victory seemed all but predetermined, there were still surprises in store.

Here’s what you need to know about the 2024 Iowa caucuses.

US elections 2024: a calendar of the key events

Read more

1. Trump’s hold on rural America, and the Republican base, remains unthreatened

All major polls predicted a Trump win, and they proved to be right. It was a reminder that when it comes to Trump, the rules do not apply: Trump spent relatively little time campaigning in Iowa, didn’t participate in any of the Republican debates, and spent the last year dodging court dates and legal troubles.

The speed at which the former president won Iowa signals an easy road to the next primary in New Hampshire and likely the Republican nomination.

2. Voters were most concerned about the economy, immigration and foreign policy

The caucuses confirmed that most Republicans are rallying around just a handful of policy issues when making their decision in this year’s election. While economic indicators under Joe Biden have been largely positive, voters in Iowa remain underwhelmed.

Meanwhile, issues at the border and the escalating conflict in the Middle East weighed heavily on people’s minds as they chose their candidate. This could prove an important roadmap for Biden as he looks to gain independent voters.

3. The stakes for democracy got even higher

There were several surveys and polls in Iowa these past few days that indicate that Trump’s attempts to overturn the last election has had lasting influence on his party.

A poll of likely Republican caucus voters published ahead of the vote found that 61% said their support of Trump would not be affected by a potential criminal conviction before the general election. An NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll said 19% of Republican caucus-goers would be more likely to back Trump if he is convicted. And in one poll on Monday evening, 90% of Trump voters said they did not think Biden fairly won the election in 2020. (There is no evidence of widespread fraud in that election, in which Biden won both the electoral college and popular vote.)

4. New Hampshire just got more interesting

The race for second place remains close. Ron DeSantis’s investment in Iowa paid off, as the Florida governor came in ahead of Nikki Haley on Monday. But Haley has focused more on campaigning in New Hampshire in past weeks, giving her an advantage there. With Haley and DeSantis neck-and-neck, this also means that Trump gets what he wants: a clear lead with no viable alternative.

ATTACHMENT SIXTEEN – FROM THE WASHINGTON POST

FIVE TAKEAWAYS FROM THE REPUBLICAN IOWA CAUCUSES

SEE HERE for CHARTS AND GRAPHS

by Aaron Blake January 15, 2024 at 11:54 p.m. EST

Former president Donald Trump won the Iowa caucuses Monday in the first step toward the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, keeping him on course for the coronation that has looked likely for months.

Trump defeated Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis 51 percent to 21 percent. Former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley was in third place at 19 percent, followed by businessman Vivek Ramaswamy at 8 percent.

The result was no big surprise, as Trump has led in polls by about 30 points for months.

Here’s more on what happened, the numbers behind it, and what it means, at least for the near future.

1. Trump is the huge favorite we thought he was

Pretty much regardless of the margin Monday, Trump was going to begin the primary calendar as an overwhelming favorite. The results suggest he might well be a prohibitive one.

The winning margin set a record for a Republican Iowa caucuses that didn’t include an incumbent, more than doubling Bob Dole’s 13-point victory in 1988.

It’s tempting to play the expectation game — to look at who is rising and falling at this moment, as well as how they fared relative to the polls and their own goals. But there is no getting around the fact that the biggest takeaway, now that voting has begun, is that Trump looks every bit the favorite he has since the summer.

The result is the culmination of a year-long trend in the Republican Party back toward Trump. Shortly after the 2022 election, virtually every national poll showed DeSantis leading Trump head-to-head; Monday’s results — Trump taking a majority of votes in a crowded field — suggested even that highly hypothetical path is cut off.

They also came after Trump was indicted on 91 criminal counts and after he was found liable in civil court for sexual abuse and financial fraud. If there was any doubt that Republicans would stick by their man once it came time to actually vote, he went a long way toward erasing it.

If you’re scrounging really hard for some kind of bad news for Trump, it’s that nearly half of voters voted against someone who amounted to an incumbent. Also, entrance polls showed 3 in 10 voters said he wouldn’t be fit to serve as president if he’s convicted of crimes, and a Fox News analysis showed more than 6 in 10 Haley voters said they wouldn’t support Trump in the general election. Those numbers could cost Trump significantly in a general election if they hold.

But the party proved it will rally around him, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see that continue.

2. Haley didn’t get her pre-New Hampshire bump

The second piece of good news for Trump was who finished second.

DeSantis beat Haley for that spot, according to the AP, despite late polling that had suggested she might overtake him.

It was close, but that would seem to reinforce the fact that Republican voters aren’t yet set on a Trump alternative. Haley was surely hoping that beating DeSantis coming out of Iowa — a state he focused heavily on — would inject some momentum into her effort to beat Trump in the New Hampshire primary next week. It’s really the only state polling somewhat competitively, and one she hopes will recast the race.

Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley addressed supporters following her third place finish in the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

The results undermine Haley’s claim to being that true alternative. A win in New Hampshire would be huge, but it’s probably more difficult now. And it’s more likely now that she’ll have to deal with DeSantis sticking around and peeling away non-Trump voters in future states, even if she gets a very positive result next week.

Shy of that, we have what we’ve long thought we’d have: a competition for the front-runner of the also-rans — the candidates slugging it out for second place, hoping to put themselves in position in case Trump somehow implodes — and letting Trump avoid a truly sustained campaign against him in the process.

3. A few key entrance poll findings tell the tale

A few of the most important entrance poll findings that explain what we just witnessed:

· About two-thirds of voters wrongly believe President Biden wasn’t legitimately elected in 2020. That’s similar to where the GOP has been in national polls. But also consider this: Fewer than 1 in 10 Trump voters said Biden’s win was legitimate. Trump’s baseless claim pervades the party, but it defines his most devoted base.

· DeSantis actually won nearly half of voters who said abortion was their most important issue. That’s compared with 25 percent for Trump, the man who appointed the justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. (Trump has criticized Florida’s six-week ban as being too harsh.) The problem was these voters accounted for just 11 percent of caucus-goers. More than 7 in 10 voters emphasized the economy or immigration, and Trump dominated among them.

· Haley dominated among voters who said having the right temperament was the most important candidate quality. She also competed with Trump among electability-first voters. But these groups combined for only about one-fourth of the vote. There were more voters who preferred a candidate who “fights for people like me,” and Trump took 8 out of 10 voters there. Character and pragmatism took a distinct back seat Monday, and Trump benefited.

· Trump managed to win college-educated voters, even as he generally does better the less formally educated a voter is. (He finished third among college-educated voters in the 2016 caucuses.) If he even competes to win those voters in other states, his opponents have basically no shot.

4. Turnout was down a lot from 2016, but …

About 110,000 votes have been counted — a total that is way down from the 187,000 who voted in the 2016 caucuses, which also featured Trump.

Certainly, some will see that as a potential sign of diminished enthusiasm on the GOP side. But caucus night featured frigid, negative temperatures — the coldest caucuses ever — and turnout was just a little shy of 2012 and 2008. Also, the race didn’t look too competitive leading up to the caucuses, meaning some voters might have decided their vote wasn’t that important.

New Hampshire, which looks more competitive and won’t feature such conditions, should be a better gauge.

One thing we can say: Results closely mirrored late polling, suggesting that the lower turnout didn’t particularly cost any one candidate.

5. Ramaswamy’s exit could bolster Trump a bit

The caucuses did feature one significant casualty. Ramaswamy, whose single-digit showing came up well shy of his repeated promises of a major surprise, announced shortly afterward that he was dropping out and endorsing Trump.

The exit could bolster Trump further, given that Ramaswamy geared his campaign toward Trump supporters, lavishing Trump with praise and lodging a number of conspiracy theories.

But Ramaswamy’s support both nationally and in New Hampshire was lower than it was in Iowa.

Trump’s campaign in the closing days went hard after Ramaswamy, accusing him of undermining Trump while ostensibly praising him.

ATTACHMENT SEVENTEEN – FROM WGBH (BOSTON)

WHY THIS YEAR’S NEW HAMPSHIRE PRIMARY FEELS DIFFERENT (AND IS)

By Adam Reilly January 18, 2024\

The New Hampshire primary is the best-known political ritual in New England — a quadrennial source of intrigue and drama in which a few hundred thousand Granite State voters play an outsized role in setting the national political agenda.

But with the 2024 primary less than a week away, close primary observers say that, this particular election cycle, the excitement that usually accompanies the event has been in short supply.

“Everyone is really bored,” Chris Galdieri, a political scientist and New Hampshire primary expert at Saint Anselm College, told GBH News recently.

Another primary expert, Dante Scala of the University of New Hampshire, struck a similarly downbeat note.

“It’s one of the most boring primary cycles I’ve seen, and I’ve been here since 2000,” Scala said.

There are a couple possible explanations for this muted atmosphere. First, New Hampshire primaries tend to be exciting when they’re wide-open affairs packed with plenty of uncertainty. Case in point: the 2008 cycle, when Hillary Clinton topped Barack Obama and John Edwards on the Democratic side and John McCain beat Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee in the Republican contest.

In this cycle, though, the exact opposite dynamic exists. Joe Biden is already president — and Donald Trump, who already was president, has been the overwhelming favorite to become the Republican nominee once again for years rather than months.

In other words, Scala argues, it’s basically like two incumbents are running simultaneously.

“That could readily explain the doldrums we’re experiencing,” he said.

In addition to this double-incumbent effect, the 2024 Democratic primary also features a bizarre vacuum. Back in 2022, Biden proposed a plan to shake up the Democrats’ nominating schedule by giving South Carolina the first primary, followed soon after by New Hampshire and Nevada. The plan was backed by the Democratic National Committee, which touted South Carolina’s greater demographic diversity as a reason to make the change. (In addition to having a large Black population, South Carolina also gave Biden a crucial win in the 2020 primary cycle after he’d finished dead last in the Granite State.)

But New Hampshire — which has its first-in-the-nation status codified in state law — ignored the wishes of Biden et al. and proceeded to schedule its primary first anyway. Biden, in turn, has responded by acting like New Hampshire’s contest doesn’t even exist. Not only has he refrained from campaigning in the state, he didn’t put his name on the ballot.

If Biden were actually participating, it might not up the excitement factor all that much, since his best-known opponents, Minnesota U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips and self-help celebrity Marianne Williamson, have been struggling to make the contest competitive. But it would have given the Democratic contest a bit of luster and gravitas that it currently lacks. (Because the primary is being held in violation of Democratic National Committee rules, no delegates are at stake.)

At the same time, Biden’s non-participation also creates an interesting subplot to track between now and next Tuesday. While he’s not actively running in the state, Biden supporters have marshaled a campaign of their own: they’re trying to get as many Democratic primary voters as possible to write him in on the ballot on Jan. 23 — thereby avoiding an embarrassing outcome in which, for example, a sitting president gets less than a majority of the vote.

The Write-In Joe Biden effort is based in New Hampshire, but it’s also getting a boost from Massachusetts, where Gov. Maura Healey and others have been working to drum up support for Biden’s pseudo-candidacy. One of the organizers of those efforts, Democratic political consultant Joe Caiazzo, insists there’s plenty of support for Biden in New Hampshire despite his attempt to downgrade the state’s political role. In a recent memo, Caiazzo wrote that, when pollsters actually name Biden as an option along with Phillips and Williamson, his projected vote tally ranges from 50 to nearly 70%, though it's lower if Biden isn't offered as a choice.

But other observers are more skeptical.

"A lot of Democrats are saying, 'What's the point, since the [Democratic National Committee] doesn't even recognize what we'll write in?'" said Arnie Arnesen, a former state representative and Democratic nominee for governor who hosts the radio show “The Attitude” on WNHN 94.7 FM.

Galdieri, the Saint Anselm political scientist, argues that Caiazzo and his write-in allies are actually making a pretty big ask of voters.

“They’re sending out these incredibly detailed mailers — you know, ‘You have to go all the way to the bottom of the ballot and fill in the circle next to ‘Write in,’ and then write in Joe Biden,’" Galdieri said. "And that’s just asking a lot of work of people.”

Given this, Galdieri said, winning 60% of the vote would represent a triumph for Biden’s absent campaign. But a weak showing — say, with Biden finishing in the forties and one of his challengers finishing with an unexpectedly strong result — could prompt negative commentary that lingers for days or weeks.

“If it’s a single-digit thing, or even a low double-digit win for Biden, I think there are a lot of folks who will take that, if not as a sign that he should get out, [then] as a sign to panic …. in part because there’s not going to be that much else to talk about, unless Nikki Haley does really well in New Hampshire,” Galdieri said.

The latter scenario, it’s worth noting, looks a bit more likely right now than it did just a few days ago. On Wednesday, a new poll from the American Research Group showed Haley running neck and neck with Trump, with each candidate garnering support from 40% of likely Republican primary voters.

That survey may be an outlier. Another new poll, from Suffolk University, paints a very different picture of the race, with Haley trailing Trump by 14 points.

Scala, the University of New Hampshire political scientist, said that if Haley can get people anticipating a Trump loss when the polls close on Election Day — even for a few hours — it could raise doubts about his inevitability and fundamentally shift the narrative around the contest.

“If, at 8:01 p.m. on January 23, the [TV] anchor says the exit polls show the race is too close to call, I think it’ll send a shock through the assembled national media in Manchester,” Scala said. “It’ll take that, rather than losing by 10 or 15%, to signify something for Haley … She needs one of those nights when everyone resets their ideas of what’s possible.”

Meanwhile, this entire election cycle has accomplished a similar reset when it comes to the New Hampshire primary itself. The Democratic National Committee’s plans for the 2028 cycle have yet to take shape. But by keeping his distance despite the potential negative consequences, Biden has shown that it's possible to simply ignore the primary if your position is strong enough. That sets a precedent other Democrats could follow in the future, and it just might pave the way for the primary's evolution into an exercise still important to Republicans but of marginal significance to the other side of the aisle.

Arnesen, the former state representative and talk-show host, said she’s afraid the standoff between New Hampshire and national Democrats will mark a turning point for the worse, after casting a pall that's been hard to lift.

“This has been the most depressing, saddest primary I have ever experienced,” Arnesen said. “There is no passion … Not only do I feel disengaged, but I feel like everyone in New Hampshire is disengaged.”

@malaise migrates east

ATTACHMENT EIGHTEEN – FROM THE GUARDIAN U.K.

NIKKI HALEY’S PRETEND SLAVERY ‘GAFFE’ TOLD US WHAT THIS ELECTION IS ABOUT

Voters will decide the unresolved question of the civil war: do we move backwards, or forwards toward true democracy?

Thu 11 Jan 2024 11.00 EST

Nikki Haley’s difficulty articulating the cause of the civil war – the war that began in her home state of South Carolina – has put that issue in the headlines just days before the first votes are cast in the Republican nomination contest. While Haley was caught trying to be too clever by half in refusing to name slavery as the cause of the nation’s bloodiest conflict, the controversy has had the unintended effect of framing what is facing the country’s voters in 2024.

This year’s election is, in fact, a continuation of the unresolved question of the civil war era: will the country continue to move towards fostering a multiracial democracy, or will it aggressively reject its growing diversity and attempt to make America white again?

The US election looms. Arab Americans feel stuck between a rock and a hard place

Moustafa Bayoumi

Haley’s entire career has consisted of trying to walk the tightest of tightropes. She is a woman of color operating in a political party whose driving forces are white racial resentment and misogyny (and, increasingly, homophobia and transphobia). On the one hand, she is eagerly embraced as a high-profile party symbol who serves as a strong rebuttal to accusations of racism and sexism (“See, we’re not racist and sexist, we have a woman of color as our governor!”). On the other hand, white racial resentment serves as fuel for the Trump movement to the extent that no presidential candidate can hope to win the nomination without bending a knee to the Confederate cause.

This high-wire act was most prominently on display in 2015, when a white man who had proudly posed with pictures of the Confederate flag walked into the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church in South Carolina, declared, “You rape our women. And you’re taking over our country. And you have to go,” and proceeded to murder nine Black people. That tragedy was too much even for most defenders of the Confederate flag, and Haley and the state’s political leadership begrudgingly capitulated to years-long demands to stop flying that flag over statehouse grounds.

The current conundrum is important not just because of Haley, who is emerging as Trump’s strongest competitor in the Republican field, but because of what it reveals about politics in this country in general and in the Republican party in particular.

Boiled down to its essence, much of the country – and most of the Republican voters – are still fighting the cause of the civil war in ways both literal and figurative. The active and organized resistance to removing Confederate statues led a mob of white nationalists to march through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 chanting “Jews will not replace us”; one Hitler-loving member of the crowd gunned his car into a group of counterprotesters, killing a woman, Heather Heyer, who had come to stand for racial tolerance and peace. That was the protest of which then president Trump observed: “There are good people on both sides.”

While it is fairly widely accepted now that Trump has a stranglehold on the Republican party, many have forgotten what propelled him to his current position of seemingly unshakable dominance. In the month before launching his presidential bid in June of 2015, Trump was largely seen as a joke and languished in the polls with support from just 4% of his party. After he staked out his position as defender of white people and demonizer of Mexican immigrants (“they’re rapists, they’re murderers”), he zoomed to the top of the polls and has never looked back.

For all the talk of the Trump phenomenon being unprecedented, the truth is that he is not the first political leader to ride a wave of white racial resentment to high levels of political influence and power. In the 1960s, when Trump was in his 20s, the nation watched the Alabama governor, George Wallace, proudly proclaim “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” in his 1963 inauguration speech (delivered from the same spot where Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, took office).

Six months later, Wallace physically stood at the door of the University of Alabama auditorium to block the desegregation of Alabama’s colleges and universities. That defiant embrace of white supremacy boosted Wallace’s national standing to the extent that he launched a presidential campaign in 1968 that attracted millions of voters.

Wallace’s presidential bid was preceded by that of Strom Thurmond, who held the same office that Haley later did – governor of South Carolina. In 1948, after President Harry Truman had the temerity to urge Congress to outlaw lynching Black people, Thurmond joined forces with his fellow southern governors to create the Dixiecrat party and ran for president on a platform unapologetically stating that “We stand for the segregation of the races.” Thurmond’s third-party bid won four states outright: Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and, oh look!, South Carolina.

The centrality of white racial resentment to American politics is longstanding and explains the panic that caused Haley to become so tongue-tied. As the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, until Wednesday Haley’s competitor for the anti-Trump mantle, explained in the wake of Haley’s comments: “If she is unwilling to stand up and say that slavery is what caused the civil war … what’s going to happen when she has to stand up against forces in our own party who want to drag this country deeper and deeper into anger and division?”

If the size and power of the constituency that will brook no retreat on the cause of the Confederacy is so large that a leading presidential candidate can’t even state the simple fact that the civil war was about slavery, then the stakes in 2024 should be crystal clear. One party is propelled and dominated by voters who, essentially, want America to be a white country. On the other side is an incumbent president who just last week specifically namechecked and denounced “the poison of white supremacy” in a speech delivered from the pulpit of the same church where parishioners were murdered in 2015.

The good news is that the portion of the population that wants America to be a white nation is not the majority of people. (That’s why the Confederates had to secede in the first place, after failing to win popular support at the polls.) The challenge for those who know why the civil war started and who want to continue the journey towards multiracial democracy is to organize, inspire and galvanize that majority in the upcoming elections.

To do that, we need to do what Nikki Haley can’t or won’t – state clearly why the civil war started, declare our determination to finish the job of reconstructing this nation and do everything we can to ensure massive voter turnout in November.

· Steve Phillips is the founder of Democracy in Color, and author of Brown Is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority and How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good

· This article was amended on 12 January 2024 to make clear that in 2015 the confederate flag was removed from statehouse grounds. The main photo was also changed to show this. An earlier version said the flag was removed from the capitol and showed a picture of it flying from the building’s dome. This change, however, happened in 2000.

ATTACHMENT NINETEEN – FROM THE WASHINGTON POST

OPINIONS -  IOWA’S CAUCUS SYSTEM IS SNOW WAY TO PICK A PRESIDENT

By Alexandra Petri January 12, 2024 at 7:19 p.m. EST

DES MOINES — Time for a civics lesson! In the United States, what is the first step we take to decide who gets to be on the ballot for president?

Simple! We have all the people who want to run for president go to Iowa for, say, 11 months. First, we have them eat corn under intense scrutiny and be photographed sliding down a large slide. (This must tell us something important about them — perhaps how quickly they could get down from an international summit?) They then go to a lot of event centers and restaurants and shake hands and give stump speeches as the weather gets steadily colder.

And then, we pick a weekend — ideally in the middle of January. A holiday weekend when it is so cold and snowy that Iowa, a place that is actually accustomed to snow, begins Friday by canceling school. A weekend when the local weather team is urgently telling you not to leave home if you can possibly help it, because if you are outside for five Minutes with any exposed skin, you will develop frostbite. A weekend when the weather is anticipated to hit minus-25 degrees with wind chill, and minus-2 without it — a temperature so low that I had to check that it was, indeed, in Fahrenheit, given that water freezes at 32 degrees. I don’t know what water does at minus-2 degrees, but I guess I will find out!

And to close out that specific holiday weekend, we see who gets the most people to go to a middle school auditorium at night and, after listening to a series of speeches, vote for them. And this is how we winnow down who gets to be on the ballot for the whole country!

I see some problems with this system. I would see more problems with it, but the visibility is not very good here with all the snow. It is like being in a snow globe that someone has shaken vigorously, except you cannot turn things upside down to get them to stop. I spent a few Minutes outside trying to see whether I could get coffee, and when I returned, I looked like the last survivor of a failed polar expedition. I felt as though I should apologize to all the boosters of my expedition for not finding the Northwest Passage.

And it is a balmy 18 degrees now! I am going to long for these temperatures come Monday, the day of the actual caucuses! But still, it is already so bad out there that not just Nikki Haley, not just Vivek Ramaswamy, not just Donald Trump, but even Ron DeSantis’s Never Back Down PAC (which has “Never Back Down” in the name) have been calling off events.

Look, it is barely an insult to the Republican candidates to say that it is difficult to imagine being excited enough by any of them to want to go outside in this weather. "We need an accountant in the White House!” is hardly an applause line in a warm room with a bar in it.

I can imagine, perhaps, being excited enough by Haley’s candidacy that I would go to a coffee shop in normal temperatures, if I already wanted to go. I cannot imagine getting 10 friends to come out with me in a sub-zero snowstorm to caucus for Haley. I can barely get 10 friends to come do fun things in normal conditions.

And this is how we wind up with Trump! He is a threat to our democracy, something he keeps excitedly shouting at rallies and having his followers intimate in menacing voicemails to the judges evaluating cases against him. Fortunately, there are many ways of stopping him from becoming the next president. Unfortunately, there are many ways of stopping him from becoming the next president, which means that each individual time, you can say to yourself, “Eh, it’s too cold. I’ll get the next one.”

Look, I think it’s bad any time there is an obstacle to voting. So I already do not love the caucuses, a system that requires people to be available for an extended period of time on a weeknight, something that I have discovered, as a parent, is literally impossible. Candidly, I do not think that, in order to express a preference about who gets to be the next president, you should have to load up a sled behind a team of huskies, wrap yourself in approximately 48 layers of insulation, announce, “I am just going outside and may be some time,” and find a babysitter on a Monday night. Hell of a way to choose a president!

No. This is far too cold for Hell.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY – FROM THE GUARDIAN U.K.

TRUMP WON IOWA HANDILY. THE IDEA THAT HE WON’T BE THE NOMINEE IS ABSURD

As they proclaimed his victory, the news anchors muttered, ‘It’s Donald Trump’s party now.’ Just like they’ve done every night since 2016

By Moira Donegan Tue 16 Jan 2024 02.09 EST

The journalists came in and issued their ritual dispatches from the bucolic midwest, describing the state in terms heavy on sentiment and light on respect. The candidates poured their money and time into the state, with Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida and one-time favorite for the nomination, betting all his hopes on the state. They persisted through an ominous blizzard and through the punishing cold of a plains winter to make it to the high school gyms and recreation centers where the caucuses took place. And they did all this, made all this effort and expense, in order to change absolutely nothing about the race.

Trump’s Iowa win marks a comeback for him and a step backwards for the country

Trump won the Iowa caucuses handily; the major networks called for him almost as soon as the doors opened. There was never any question that he wouldn’t, except perhaps in the mind of the most delusional DeSantis aides. Nikki Haley was in a tight race for second against DeSantis, as each pretends that they are in fact really running for president – and not, as anyone can see, for the positions of vice-president and attorney general, respectively. Perhaps because Trump’s fait accompli has no plot and can’t drive ratings, or perhaps because they are in denial, the networks have spent the better part of the past year pretending that there is a legitimate primary contest in the Republican party. There isn’t.

Trump’s Iowa win marks a comeback for him and astep backwards for the country

In retrospect, the notion that the 2024 Republican nominee would ever have been anyone other than Donald Trump was always a bit absurd. In 2022 and 2023, when large donors, exhausted by Trump, began pouring obscene amounts of money into the DeSantis campaign, the move had a kind of desperate logic. DeSantis had won re-election in Florida by a commanding 19 points; he had used the state to launch himself as an avatar of the racial and gender grievance that had animated many voters’ loyalty to Donald Trump. But DeSantis was supposed to be “Trump without the baggage”. He was a hyper-competent policy wonk who was supposed to be more effective, more focused and less susceptible to flattery, scandal or the distractions of short-term self-interest.

But what DeSantis offered voters was Trump’s bevy of resentments without any of Trump’s humor or charisma. On the trail, DeSantis is reptilian and creepy. He has a plaintive, whining affect that makes his hatreds for racial and gender minorities become obviously pathetic, rather than commanding. He has an almost uncanny ability to say the wrong thing. In Iowa, he burned tens of millions of dollars in donor cash, like a dumped prom queen going through tissues. He needed a big win in Iowa, or what would have counted for a big win: a strong, definitive and close second place. He didn’t get it. It was a failure he paid dearly for. Over the past few weeks, DeSantis has been frantically travelling and pressing the flesh: he committed to doing in-person events in each and every one of Iowa’s 99 counties, and evidently has managed to be charmless and off-putting in every corner of the state.

Trump has long been understood as a morbid symptom of America’s failed institutions

Haley, meanwhile, has consolidated much of the “Never Trump” vote, or what’s left of it, all while studiously refusing to criticize Trump much at all. The former president’s advisers have reportedly suggested he seek a woman for VP, to try to counter the political liability of Dobbs. Haley’s campaign for president, such as it is, has been little more than a long audition for this role, one embarked upon with an eager solicitousness that seems almost canine.

Trump has long been understood as a morbid symptom of America’s failed institutions. He is what happens when a country takes on the pretext of being a pluralistic democracy without meaningfully politically empowering its historically subordinated populations; he is what happens when republican forms of government coexist with dramatic inequality of wealth; he is what happens when people understand corruption to guide their politicians more than principle, and when the clearly expressed desires of the electorate no longer seem to have any meaningful impact on the policy positions of decision-makers. All of these factors are behind his rise, and all of these factors drove him to victory in Iowa on Monday night with the same determination that they drove him to the nomination in 2016.

But what it less clearly understood is why the media and political apparatus that surrounds Trump has been so slow to accommodate the reality he has imposed. The donors flocked to DeSantis in a very expensive kind of denial; the networks covered the challenges as if they were serious; newspapers told us, yet again, that Trump’s appeal must be understood by liberals, as if we have not been made so exhaustively, repetitively aware of Trump and the exact nature of his appeal for the better part of a decade now. As they proclaimed his victory, the news anchors muttered, “It’s Donald Trump’s party now.” Just like they’ve done every night since 2016.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY ONE – FROM GUK

DONALD TRUMP BEAT HIS OPPONENTS. BUT CAN HE BEAT THE COURTS?

The result of the Iowa caucuses was an easy tale foretold. But Trump’s triumph over his legal troubles is far from certain

By Sidney Blumenthal Wed 17 Jan 2024 06.17 EST

Donald Trump’s most dangerous race is not with other Republican candidates, but against the law. In his political match, he faces no serious contest. His victory in the Iowa caucuses results was crushing. But in his legal trials, he is on the run. For Trump, the legal is the political.

The calendars overlap. His overarching strategy is not so much calculated to defeat his feeble Republican opponents but to delay his trials by any gambit necessary. The delays give him space to depict himself as a martyr, taking the slings and arrows for his believers, who are his hope to rescue him.

So long as the band plays, he doesn’t have to face the music. Once it stops, his primary voters are replaced by a jury. He can rant all he likes on his Truth Social account, but the evidence will finally speak for itself. Trump strains to exploit the political campaign as his shield to avoid the day of judgment. Plus, it’s a cash cow.

Judge threatens to exclude Trump from court for loudcomplaints as E Jean Carroll testifies – live

January 6 is more than the most important issue in the election for Trump and his followers. It is his passion play. His rivals have helpfully acted as his Greek chorus. Rather than develop an alternative strategy, say, to lever college-educated Republicans away from Trump, they have shouted from the wings to amplify his conspiracy theories. “Why so zealous in pursuing Trump yet so passive about Hillary or Hunter?” Ron DeSantis tweeted last June. Nikki Haley, for her part, chimed in to denounce the justice system as “prosecutorial overreach, double standards and vendetta politics”. Trump could not have paid for better ringers.

Only Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, erstwhile but remorseful booster, was willing to utter the forbidden, “Too bad, go to jail.” The rest waved their hands at an August debate like eager pupils seeking teacher’s attention that they would pardon Trump. Five days before the Iowa caucuses, polling poorly, Christie dropped out, declaring: “I’m going to make sure that in no way do I enable Donald Trump to ever be president of the United States again.” He refused to endorse anyone. “No one’s going to tell the truth about him.” On a hot mic, he was caught saying about Haley: “She’s going to get smoked,” and “She’s not up to this.” Stating the obvious was more a shrug than a prophesy. Yet she could not even scratch into second place.

The result of the Iowa caucuses was an easy tale foretold. But it has been significant in revealing the degree to which Trump has consolidated his domination over the shell of the Republican party. At the end of the process that will inexorably nominate him the remnant of the GOP will be subsumed into his cult.

His success in debauching opinion among Republicans is clear in the answer of Iowa Republicans to an exit poll question: “Do you think that Joe Biden legitimately won the presidency in 2020?” Of the respondents, 65% answered negatively, and of them 69% voted for Trump. For them, the January 6 insurrection is the centerpiece of this election. With Trump, they believe that the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers imprisoned for their violent assault on the Capitol are “hostages” who deserve pardons, and that Trump must be vindicated. In their eyes, he is not being prosecuted, but persecuted, just as Trump’s primary opponents have echoed.

Iowa was more than a political event. It was a religious experience for most of the caucus goers, slightly more than half of them evangelical Christian nationalists. Voting for Trump was not a civic exercise but a spiritual crusade to make America into a Christian nation on a divine mission as the founding fathers supposedly intended according to their crackpot history. The first Trump term was just the beginning; the next will be like a second coming. Iowa is the first step towards Trump’s anointment, his deification for a holy war.

In Trump’s first campaign in 2016, he was an outlander, a brash New Yorker from the church of the art of the deal. Iowa Republicans have consistently given their votes to the candidate who was the most fervent evangelical Christian linked to the religious right. In 2000, born-again George W Bush won in a walk; in 2008, it was preacher and Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee who defeated John McCain; in 2012, rightwing Catholic Rick Santorum trounced Mitt Romney; and in 2016 Ted Cruz of Texas clobbered Trump, who then only won only 21% of the evangelical support.

Within the new dispensation, Trump has been elevated into a double existence. He is both an American incarnation of King Cyrus of ancient Persia, who conquered Babylon, and the godhead himself. Before January 6, Christian nationalists saw him as a flawed vessel sent by God to restore the old kingdom. Many of the January 6 insurrectionists flaunted Christian nationalist signs, flags and slogans. Now, they view Trump as Christ-like, being crucified on their behalf. As Cyrus, Trump is forgiven his sins. As Christ, his crimes are signs of his divinity.

During the 2016 Iowa caucuses, the most prominent evangelical leader of the Christian right in the state, Bob Vander Plaats, endorsed Ted Cruz. This time he backed DeSantis. Trump was so confident of evangelical backing that two days before the caucuses, he laid into him, tweeting: “Bob Vander Plaats, the former High School Accountant from Iowa, will do anything to win, something which he hasn’t done in many years. He’s more known for scamming Candidates than he is for Victory, but now he’s going around using Disinformation from the Champions of that Art, the Democrats.”

Trump in Iowa conflated his pressing legal troubles with the imaginary oppression of Christians. “Under crooked Joe Biden, Christians and Americans of faith are being persecuted and government has been weaponized against religion like never before. And also presidents like never before,” Trump said on 19 December. Referring to the mafia kingpin who was finally nailed on income tax evasion, he added: “I always say Al Capone was treated better than I was treated.” Vander Plaats’ grip was broken.

Of all the odd occurrences in the campaign so far, one of the strangest was a stray cogent remark from Ron DeSantis, who has been relentlessly clueless to the point that after his last debate with Nikki Haley he approached the audience from the stage to shake his wife’s hand. In trying to explain why he was failing, without mentioning that he spent more on private jets than on advertising, he blathered into coherence. “It’s all a racket – they’re trying to get clicks, they’re trying to do all this stuff,” he said. “Big causes start out as a movement, end up a business and degenerate into a racket. That’s just human nature.”

Not exactly. DeSantis was paraphrasing a social philosopher on the psychological basis of authoritarian movements. Eric Hoffer was an itinerant longshoreman whose book The True Believer, on the mentality of Naziism and Communism, published in 1951, drew praise from President Dwight Eisenhower in one of his first press conferences. Hoffer described how individuals erased their volition and critical thinking by submerging themselves into movements led by demagogues.

“The fanatic,” Hoffer wrote, “is perpetually incomplete and insecure. He cannot generate self-assurance out of his individual resources – out of his rejected self – but finds it only by clinging passionately to whatever support he happens to embrace.” The demagogue appeals to restoring the good old days. “A glorification of the past can serve as a means to belittle the present.” Through propaganda, “people can be made to believe only in what they already ‘know’”. Enemies must be identified as the source of decay. “Finally, it seems, the ideal devil is a foreigner. To qualify as a devil, a domestic enemy must be given a foreign ancestry.” But, Hoffer wrote, it would be a mistake to give too much credence to the ideas of demagogues. “The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.”

Eisenhower, who had led the armies that defeated Hitler, wrote a letter in 1958 warning against authoritarianism. Citing Hoffer, he stated that “dictatorial systems make one contribution to their people which leads them to tend to support such systems – freedom from the necessity of informing themselves and making up their own minds concerning these tremendous compleAnd difficult questions”.

DeSantis, who has attempted and failed to supplant Trump by whipping up hysteria against the menace of “wokeness”, more or less got one of Hoffer’s memorable quotes right. “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

In Georgia, on 14 August 2023, Trump was indicted on 41 felony counts with 18 co-defendants for conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results under the state’s Rico statute – the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

The problem in applying Hoffer’s aphorism to Trump is that with him it was always a racket.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY TWO – FROM GUK
IT ISN’T ‘ANTI-DEMOCRATIC’ TO BAR TRUMP FROM OFFICE. IT’S NEEDED TO PROTECT DEMOCRACY

If it lets an insurrectionist like Trump on the ballot, the supreme court will be putting out a welcome mat to autocracy

By Steven Greenhouse Thu 18 Jan 2024 06.01 EST

Over the decades, several US supreme court justices have warned that the US constitution is not a suicide pact – in other words, that the constitution shouldn’t be interpreted in ways that jeopardize the survival of our nation and our democracy.

Right now, however, I worry that the supreme court’s rightwing supermajority, in its anticipated rush to prohibit states from kicking Donald Trump off the ballot, will turn the constitution into a suicide pact. By letting an insurrectionist like Trump remain on the ballot – a man who spurned centuries of constitutional tradition by refusing to peacefully turn over the reins rains? of power to the man who defeated him – the supreme court would be putting out a welcome mat to a candidate who has made no secret of his plans to trample all over the constitution and trash our democratic traditions.

Many legal experts worry that the rightwing justices will focus on the wrong issue when the high court takes up the historic Colorado case about whether a state can kick Trump off the ballot – a case in which the court might also decide whether Trump should be disqualified from the ballot in all 50 states.

When the court considers that case, the six conservative justices might focus on their concerns about infuriating rightwing voters, their political soulmates, if they rule that the constitution requires that Trump be disqualified as an insurrectionist. The justices will also no doubt worry that they’ll be seen as taking a high-handed, anti-democratic step if they deny voters the opportunity to vote for Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee.

But the justices’ job is not to worry about angering the Maga crowd. Their job is to focus on enforcing the text of the constitution and, along with it, preserving our democracy. An insurrectionist candidate who stands a good chance of winning the presidency in November could drive a stake through the heart of America’s democracy.

The Colorado case centers on the 14th amendment, a post-civil war measure that aimed to ensure all citizens – especially formerly enslaved people – the equal protection of the law. Section 3 of that amendment aimed to bar supporters of the Confederacy who had rebelled against the United States and its constitution from holding office: “No person shall be a senator or representative in Congress, or … hold any office, civil or military, under the United States … who, having previously taken an oath … to support the constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

One can’t honestly deny that Trump promoted and aided an insurrection. He unarguably gave “aid or comfort” to the January 6 assault on the Capitol, which was essentially a coup attempt that sought to prevent the rightfully elected president, Joe Biden, from taking office. In disqualifying Trump, the Colorado supreme court wrote: “The record amply established that the events of January 6 constituted a concerted and public use of force or threat of force by a group of people to hinder or prevent the US government from taking the actions necessary to accomplish the peaceful transfer of power in this country. Under any viable definition, this constituted an insurrection.”

The House select committee on January 6 provided a mountain of evidence showing that Trump had planned and backed that insurrection. Trump not only “summoned tens of thousands of supporters to Washington for Jan. 6”, the committee established, but also urged them to march to the Capitol to “take back” the country. Even as rioters stormed the Capitol and assaulted the police, Trump tweeted messages that whipped up the violent crowd’s animus against the then vice-president, Mike Pence.

Trump, the committee wrote, also “refused repeated requests over a multiple-hour period that he instruct his violent supporters to disperse and leave the Capitol”. Trump also refused to call in the national guard or any federal law enforcement to stop the assault on the Capitol.

The Court’s job is to uphold and enforce the Constitution without fear or favor, and it shouldn’t be cowed by anyone, not by Trump’s supporters and certainly not by Trump, who dangerously warned of “big, big trouble” if the justices rule against him in this case.

Constitutional scholars say the Supreme Court might engage in some legal legerdemain and search for some escape clause to keep Trump on the ballot and prohibit states from disqualifying him. Some scholars predict the justices will rule that Trump must first be convicted in court as an insurrectionist before he can be disqualified – even though many supporters of the Confederacy were disqualified from holding office without being convicted in court and even though Section 3 says nothing about requiring convictions.

Some constitutional experts contend that Section 3 doesn’t apply to presidents and that Trump therefore shouldn’t be disqualified under it. Section 3 specifically mentions disqualifying Senators and House members, but it doesn’t mention the presidency. But that’s undoubtedly because Section 3’s authors never dreamed that a past insurrectionist would ever be running for president. There can’t be any doubt that Section 3’s authors would have insisted on disqualifying Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, if he had become a candidate for the presidency of the United States.

If the supreme court’s six rightwing justices allow Trump to stay on the ballot, they can do so only by turning their backs on the methods of constitutional interpretation that they have repeatedly trumpeted: textualism and originalism. Not only is the text of Section 3 crystal clear about barring insurrectionists, but the Radical Republicans who wrote the 14th amendment would have been repulsed by the idea of letting an insurrectionist like Trump run for the highest office of the land.

Trump of course complains that the push to disqualify him is a leftist plot. But the two constitutional scholars who led the way in arguing that Trump should be disqualified – William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen – are highly regarded conservative members of the Federalist Society. Moreover, one of the jurists most respected by conservatives, former federal judge J Michael Luttig, has lauded the Colorado supreme court’s decision as “unassailable”.

In decades past, the US supreme court did not shrink from issuing decisions that offended and angered millions of Americans, whether it was enraging many white southerners by barring school segregation in Brown v Board of Education, or infuriating millions of women by overturning Roe v Wade, or angering a wide swath of Democrats by cutting short the vote count to deliver victory to George W Bush over Al Gore. In the Colorado disqualification case, the justices should not shrink from angering Trump supporters. The justices should do what they’ve taken an oath to do: enforce the letter of the law.

Notwithstanding what Trump’s defenders say, those who seek to disqualify Trump are not suppressing democracy. They are seeking to enforce the constitution’s clear language against the nation’s most prominent insurrectionist. The person who is seeking to suppress democracy is Trump (along with many of his Maga supporters).

Trump was anti-democratic in seeking to overturn Biden’s legitimate, 51-47% victory in 2020. Trump was anti-democratic when he called for terminating the constitution. Trump has threatened to be a dictator on day one, and someone who threatens to be dictator on his first day in office might not stop there.

Trump has loudly signaled that he will trample all over our constitutional and democratic norms

Moreover, whenever Trump loses – for instance, when he lost the 2016 Iowa caucuses to Ted Cruz – he claims that he was cheated and demands that legitimate democratic results be discarded. Trump’s philosophy is to accept election results only when he wins and never when he loses. What can be more anti-democratic than that? That anti-democratic philosophy fueled the January 6 insurrection.

There’s no denying that on a certain level it would be anti-democratic to bar a popular candidate like Trump from the ballot, and, yes, that could stir up an ugly and perhaps violent and illegal response from the Maga crowd. Yet let’s not forget that much of the constitution is anti-democratic and counter-majoritarian; it, for instance, prohibits a majority of lawmakers from restricting your freedom of speech or your freedom to practice your religion.

Those who warn that it would be anti-democratic to kick Trump off the ballot should realize that Trump’s election as president would be a far graver and longer-lasting risk to our democracy. This is a man who has talked of being a dictator, of terminating the constitution, of using his second presidential term to exact vengeance against his enemies and critics. This is a man who even floated the idea of executing Mark Milley, the general who was chairman of Trump’s joint chiefs of staff.

If the supreme court lets Trump remain on the ballot, history may remember John Roberts and company as the court that gave a bright green light to the election of an insurrectionist who would end our democracy as we know it.

For the nine justices, the bottom line should be not only that Trump was an insurrectionist, but that Trump has loudly signaled that if he’s elected to a second term, he will trample all over our constitutional and democratic norms. If the justices interpret the constitution to let insurrectionist Trump remain on the ballot, the Roberts court may be taking a giant, highly regrettable step toward turning our constitution into a suicide pact for our democracy.

· Steven Greenhouse is an American labor and workplace journalist and writer

ATTACHMENT TWENTY THREE – FROM USA TODAY

HOW A DUSTUP BETWEEN JOE BIDEN AND NEW HAMPSHIRE DEMOCRATS KEPT HIM OFF THE PRIMARY BALLOT

By Francesca Chambers

CONCORD, N.H. – Democrats who want to cast a ballot for President Joe Biden in the New Hampshire primary will have to write his name in on Tuesday.

Biden is seeking a second term as president, but he is not competing in New Hampshire. The state is holding its contest earlier than this year’s Democratic primary calendar allows, and candidates who appear on the ballot here will not be eligible to accrue delegates to the national convention.

His absence from the ballot in the first-in-the nation primary state stems from an argument between New Hampshire and national Democrats over which contest will lead the nominating process. 

At Biden's request, the Democratic National Committee made South Carolina the first primary of 2024, replacing Iowa as the first contest in the party’s presidential selection process. It ordered New Hampshire to go second and on the same day as Nevada.

New Hampshire law mandates it hold the first primary, and legislators in the Republican-run state refused to break with tradition. The state’s attorney general is accusing the DNC of voter suppression and sent the organization a cease-and-desist letter last week that threatened further legal action.

Biden is unable to campaign in the state without coming under penalty from the national party. That has not stopped his administration from sending Cabinet members to New Hampshire in recent weeks to attend official administration events alongside the state’s federal delegation.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who came in second in the 2020 New Hampshire Democratic primary, have all held events this month in New Hampshire. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai was here in December.

A group of volunteers who are unaffiliated with Biden’s reelection campaign have also launched a grassroots write-in effort to keep the sitting president from losing the New Hampshire primary.

Self-help author Marianne Williamson and Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips are challenging Biden. They are participating in the unsanctioned competition on Jan. 23 that will not count toward winning the nomination and have opted to appear on the Democratic ballot.

Biden tends to draw support in New Hampshire from voters over the age of 50. Voters under the age of 30 were his weakest age group in an Emerson College poll that was published last week.

Organizers of the write-in effort have begun to lower expectations for Biden’s performance in next week’s contest. Although most Democratic voters say in surveys that they support Biden, they will have to proactively put his name down in New Hampshire for the president to emerge victorious.

“Write-in campaigns are very difficult and Joe Biden’s vote total on January 23 will understate his actual support among New Hampshire Democrats and Independents,” the group said in a Jan. 16 memo.

Former President Barack Obama, who did appear on the ballot, won his 2012 primary with 49,080 votes.

Biden is expected to have far less support in the state where unaffiliated voters can cast ballots in either party’s primary. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is vying for the support of independents in her bid to defeat former President Donald Trump in the Republican contest. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is also competing in New Hampshire.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY FOUR – FROM POLITICO

BIDEN ON TRUMP’S IOWA VICTORY: ‘I DON’T THINK IT MEANS ANYTHING’

“The president got 50-some-thousand votes,” Biden said of Trump’s Iowa victory.

By KELLY GARRITY 01/18/2024 02:38 PM EST

Former President Donald Trump pummeled his Republican opponents in Iowa’s caucuses Monday, but President Joe Biden isn’t worried.

“Well, I don’t think Iowa means anything,” Biden told reporters Thursday, when asked about the implications of Trump’s victory for his own reelection efforts.

“The president got 50-some-thousand votes, the lowest number of votes anybody who’s won got. You know, this idea that he’s going to run away, he can think anyway he wants, let him make that judgment,” Biden said.

The former president won less than 57,000 votes on Monday, during a caucus in which turnout was hampered by record-breaking low temperatures, days of blizzard conditions and a generally uncompetitive race in the state.

While other Iowa winners have gotten far less numerical votes than Trump in contests with more competitive fields — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) won the 2016 caucuses with 52,000 votes, which accounted for roughly 28 percent of the vote, for example — turnout was very low earlier this week.

According to The Des Moines Register, the 110,000 voters who came out to caucus represented just 15 percent of Iowa’s registered Republicans. Turnout was the lowest it’s been in a GOP presidential primary in 24 years, according to Business Insider.

Trump, however, handily defeated Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who won just over 21 percent of the vote, and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who came in with slightly over 19 percent.

With Trump still crushing his Republican opponents in national polls and Biden dominating a Democratic field that includes Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips and self-help guru Marianne Williamson, the pair appear to be headed for a rematch in November.

Trump, Haley and DeSantis will all appear on the New Hampshire primary ballot on Tuesday. Biden will not be on the ballot in the Granite State next week — although his allies have launched a write-in effort to hand him a win there anyway.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY FIVE – FROM CNBC

CONSUMER PRICES ROSE 0.3% IN DECEMBER, HIGHER THAN EXPECTED, PUSHING THE ANNUAL RATE TO 3.4%

By Jeff Cox PUBLISHED THU, JAN 11 20248:32 AM ESTUPDATED 6 HOURS AGO

KEY POINTS

· The consumer price index increased 0.3% in December and 3.4% from a year ago, compared with respective estimates of 0.2% and 3.2%

· Excluding volatile food and energy prices, the so-called core CPI also rose 0.3% for the month and 3.9% from a year ago, compared with respective estimates of 0.3% and 3.8%.

· Much of the increase came due to rising shelter costs. The category rose 0.5% for the month and accounted for more than half the core CPI increase.

· Wages adjusted for inflation posted a 0.2% gain on the month, while rising a modest 0.8% from a year ago. Prices that consumers pay for a variety of goods and services rose more than expected in December, according to a Labor Department measure Thursday that shows inflation still holding a grip on the U.S. economy.

The consumer price index increased 0.3% for the month, higher than the 0.2% estimate at a time when most economists and policymakers see inflationary pressures easing. On a 12-month basis, the CPI closed 2023 up 3.4%. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a year-over-year reading of 3.2%.

By comparison, the annual CPI gain in December 2022 was about 6.4%.

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, the so-called core CPI also rose 0.3% for the month and 3.9% from a year ago, compared with respective estimates of 0.3% and 3.8%. The year-over-year core reading was the lowest since May 2021.

Much of the increase came due to rising shelter costs. The category rose 0.5% for the month and accounted for more than half the core CPI increase. On annual basis, shelter costs increased 6.2%, or about two-thirds of the rise in inflation.

Fed officials largely expect shelter costs to decline through the year as renewed leases reflect lower rents.

Stock market futures were negative following the release while Treasury yields held slightly higher.

Food prices increased 0.2% in December, the same as in November. Egg prices surged 8.9% on the month, but were still down 23.8% annually. Energy posted a 0.4% gain after sliding 2.3% in November as gasoline rose 0.2%, but natural gas declined 0.4%. Airline fares increased 1% for the month.

In other key price indexes, motor vehicle insurance bounced 1.5% higher, medical care accelerated by 0.6% and used vehicle prices, a key contributor in the initial inflation surge, increased another 0.5% after being up 1.6% in November.

Wages adjusted for inflation posted a 0.2% gain on the month, while rising a modest 0.8% from a year ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said in a separate release.

Fed officials are paying particular attention to services prices as evidence for whether inflation is showing durable signs of getting back to the central bank’s 2% target.

Services less energy increased 0.4% for the month and 5.3% from a year ago.

The inflation readings cover the same month that the Federal Reserve held its key borrowing rate steady for the third straight meeting. Along with that decision, policymakers indicated that they could begin cutting rates this year so long as the inflation data continues to cooperate.

Despite the higher-than-expected inflation readings, futures traders continued to assign a strong possibility that the Fed would start cutting interest rates in March. The CME Group’s FedWatch gauge of futures pricing indicated about a 69% probability of a March reduction, slightly higher than where it stood Wednesday.

However, the probability also reflects a divide between the market and the Fed about the timing and extent of rate cuts in 2024. Markets expect six rate cuts this year; Fed projections point to just three.

“These are not bad numbers, but they do show that disinflation progress is still slow and unlikely to be a straight line down to 2%,” said Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management. “Certainly, as long as shelter inflation remains stubbornly elevated, the Fed will keep pushing back at the idea of imminent rate cuts.”

In recent days several policymakers have avoided committing to easier monetary policy.

New York Fed President John Williams said Wednesday that inflation clearly has abated from its more than 40-year peak in mid-2022 and is making solid progress. But he gave no clues as to when he thinks rate cuts will be appropriate and insisted that “restrictive” policy is likely to stay in place for some time.

Other officials, such as Fed Governor Michelle Bowman and Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan, also expressed skepticism and said they wouldn’t hesitate to hike should inflation turn higher.

Those comments come against a resilient economic backdrop, with unemployment holding below 4% and consumers continuing to spend despite evidence of rising debt loads and contracting savings.

In other economic news Thursday, the Labor Department reported that initial jobless claims were little changed at 202,000, below the Dow Jones estimate for 210,000.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY SIX – FROM REUTERS

RISING SHELTER, HEALTHCARE COSTS LIFT US CONSUMER INFLATION IN DECEMBER

By Lucia Mutikani January 11, 2024 1:39 PM

· Consumer price index rises 0.3% in December

· Shelter accounts for more than half of rise in CPI

· CPI increases 3.4% on year-on-year basis

· Core CPI gains 0.3%; up 3.9% on year-on-year basis

· Weekly jobless claims fall 1,000 to 202,000

WASHINGTON, Jan 11 (Reuters) - U.S. consumer prices increased more than expected in December, with Americans paying more for shelter and healthcare, suggesting it was probably too early for the Federal Reserve to start cutting interest rates.

Expectations for a rate cut in March were also tempered by other data on Thursday showing the labor market remained fairly tight at the start of this year, with the number of people filing new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly falling last week. The data followed news last Friday that the economy added 216,000 jobs in November and annual wage growth picked up.

"The final stretch of the path back to the 2% inflation target could be harder than the market is anticipating," said Ryan Brandham, head of global capital markets, North America, at Validus Risk Management.

The consumer price index (CPI) rose 0.3% last month after nudging up 0.1% in November, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics said. The cost of shelter, which includes rents, hotel and motel stays as well as school housing, accounted for more than half of the increase in the CPI.

Persistently high inflation poses a threat to President Joe Biden's prospects for reelection later this year. Frustration over the rising cost of living has weighed on Biden's popularity, even as other aspects of the economy, including the labor market, have remained favorable.

Gasoline prices rebounded 0.2% after dropping 6.0% in November. Food prices rose 0.2% for a second straight month. Grocery food inflation nudged up 0.1%, matching the prior month's gain. Egg prices surged 8.9% as the spread of avian flu disrupted egg-laying operations at some commercial farms.

Meat and dairy products also cost more. But breakfast cereals dropped 2.4%, the largest decrease since January 2007. Vegetables were also a bit cheaper. In the 12 months through December, the CPI rose 3.4% after increasing 3.1% in November. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the CPI would gain 0.2% on the month and climb 3.2% on a year-on-year basis.

Since slowing to an annual increase of 3.0% last June, further progress towards lower consumer inflation has been limited by persistently high rents. The annual increase in consumer prices has cooled from a peak of 9.1% in June 2022.

Inflation averaged 4.1% in 2023, down from 8.0% in 2022.

Financial markets still see more than a 60% chance of a rate cut at the Fed's March 19-20 policy meeting, according to CME Group's FedWatch Tool. The Fed has hiked its policy rate by 525 basis points to the current 5.25%-5.50% range since March 2022.

Stocks on Wall Street were trading lower. The dollar rose against a basket of currencies. Longer-dated U.S. Treasury prices fell.

GOODS DEFLATION STALLS

Excluding the volatile food and energy components, the CPI rose 0.3% last month after climbing by the same margin in November. The so-called core CPI was driven by higher shelter costs, which increased 0.5% after climbing by 0.4% in November.

Owners' equivalent rent, a measure of the amount homeowners would pay to rent or would earn from renting their property, also rose 0.5% after a similar gain in the prior month.

Rental inflation has remained elevated despite anecdotal evidence suggesting that rent asking prices were going down. Rent measures in the CPI tend to lag the independent gauges by several months. There is also a large stock of apartment buildings in the pipeline, adding to economists' expectations that rents will lead inflation lower this year.

Services inflation remained sticky, gaining a solid 0.5%, which also reflected a 0.6% increase in healthcare costs. Airline fares rebounded 1.0%. Excluding rents, services increased 0.6%, matching November's rise.

Goods price deflation stalled amid the second straight monthly increase in the cost of used cars and trucks, which more than offset declines in household furnishing and apparel. Goods prices rose 0.1% after dropping 0.7% in November. Core goods prices were unchanged after falling 0.3% in the prior month.

"Until we see further progress on services inflation, the Fed will likely be worried about upside risks to inflation," said Stephen Juneau, a U.S. economist at Bank of America Securities in New York.

The overall core CPI advanced 3.9% on a year-on-year basis in December, the smallest gain since May 2021, after rising 4.0% in November. Though consumer prices remain elevated, measures tracked by the U.S. central bank for its 2% inflation target have improved significantly.

Based on the CPI data, economists estimated that the core personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index rose 0.2% in December after gaining 0.1% in November. Rents, which account for a larger of the CPI basket, have a smaller weighting in the PCE price index.

In the 12 months through December, the core PCE price index is forecast to increase 3.0% after advancing 3.2% in November.

The release of producer price data on Friday will offer more clues on the December PCE price index data, which is due to be released later this month. With the resilient labor market keeping wage growth elevated, some economists expect a rate cut in May or June.

The labor market is gradually easing as layoffs remain low by historical norms.

In a separate report on Thursday, the Labor Department said initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 202,000 for the week ended Jan. 6.

Economists had forecast 210,000 claims for the latest week.

Claims data tend to be volatile at the start of the year. Filings remain in the lower end of the 194,000-265,000 range that prevailed in 2023. Employers are hoarding workers following difficulties finding labor in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping a recession at bay.

The number of people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid, a proxy for hiring, dropped 34,000 to 1.834 million during the week ending Dec. 30, the claims report showed.

"It does appear that conditions in the labor market are remaining pretty favorable," said Daniel Silver, an economist at JPMorgan in New York.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY SEVEN – FROM THE ECONOMIST

THE US CONGRESS REMAINS FAR FROM THE FINISH LINE OF A BUDGET DEAL

Serious disagreements persist, and time is running short to avoid a government shutdown

Jan 8th 2024 | WASHINGTON, DC

After months of wrangling and short-term extensions, on January 7th America’s congressional leaders announced the outline of an agreement to avoid a government shutdown. If that sounds too good to be true, it’s because it is. Although the latest news from House and Senate leadership is a step forward, serious disagreements persist and Congress remains far from the finish line.

Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, told his colleagues over the weekend that the leadership had agreed to $886bn for defence and $704bn for other discretionary spending for the 2024 fiscal year. That is in line with a deal negotiated last year between Mr Johnson’s predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, and President Joe Biden. In exchange for raising the debt ceiling, total discretionary spending would be limited to $1.59trn in 2024.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY EIGHT – FROM TIME

CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS REACH DEAL ON 2024 SPENDING TO AVOID GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

BY KEVIN FREKING / AP JANUARY 7, 2024 9:00 PM EST

WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders have reached an agreement on overall spending levels for the current fiscal year that could help avoid a partial government shutdown later this month.

The agreement largely hews to spending caps for defense and domestic programs that Congress set as part of a bill to suspend the debt limit until 2025. But it does provide some concessions to House Republicans who viewed the spending restrictions in that agreement as insufficient.

In a letter to colleagues, House Speaker Mike Johnson said Sunday the agreement would secure $16 billion in additional spending cuts from the previous agreement brokered by then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden and is about $30 billion less than what the Senate was considering.

“This represents the most favorable budget agreement Republicans have achieved in over a decade,” Johnson writes.

Biden said the agreement “moves us one step closer to preventing a needless government shutdown and protecting important national priorities.”

“It reflects the funding levels that I negotiated with both parties and signed into law last spring," Biden said in a statement. “It rejects deep cuts to programs hardworking families count on, and provides a path to passing full-year funding bills that deliver for the American people and are free of any extreme policies.”

The agreement speeds up the roughly $20 billion in cuts already agreed to for the Internal Revenue Service and rescinds about $6 billion in COVID relief money that had been approved but not yet spent, according to Johnson’s letter.

“It’s a good deal for Democrats and the country,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told colleagues in a briefing call.

Read More: Bidenomics Is Real Economics

Essentially, Democrats see the trade-offs they made as mild. In a description provided to reporters, they said the COVID savings would have “no significant impact on any current projects or activities in motion." And they said that moving all of the $20.2 billion in IRS cuts to this year instead of over two years would still leave the agency able to maintain “critical investments” that Congress provided in 2022. At the time, Congress provided the IRS with an additional $80 billion that could be spent over 10 years.

Overall, the agreement calls for $886 billion in defense funding. It would provide $772 billion in domestic, non-defense spending, when including $69 billion called for in a side deal to the debt ceiling bill that McCarthy had reached with the White House, Democrats said.

The most conservative House Republicans opposed the earlier debt ceiling agreement and even brought House proceedings to a halt for a few days to show their displeasure. Many were surely wanting additional concessions, but Democrats have been insistent on abiding by the debt ceiling agreement’s spending caps, leaving Johnson in a difficult spot.

“It’s even worse than we thought,” the House Freedom Caucus said of the agreement in a tweet posted on X. “This is total failure.”

Lawmakers needed an agreement on overall spending levels so that appropriators could write the bills that set line-by-line funding for agencies. Money is set to lapse Jan. 19 for some agencies and Feb. 2 for others.

The agreement is separate from the negotiations that are taking place to secure additional funding for Israel and Ukraine while also curbing restrictions on asylum claims at the U.S. border. – Do the easy stuff first @dji

In a joint statement, Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries voiced their support for the agreement.

“It will also allow us to keep the investments for hardworking American families secured by the legislative achievements of President Biden and Congressional Democrats,” Schumer and Jeffries said.

Read More: Government Shutdowns Were Never Necessary Anyway

But they also warned House Republicans about trying to add conservative policy riders to the bills in the coming days, saying Democrats would not support "poison pill policy changes in any of the twelve appropriations bills put before the Congress.“

Rep. Patrick McHenry, who helped lead the debt ceiling negotiations when McCarthy was speaker, noted that two-thirds of both parties in the House supported that agreement.

“This deal, which adheres to that framework, deserves equally as robust support,” McHenry said.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., tweeted that he was encouraged that leaders identified a “path toward completing” the spending bills. It was a cautious recognition that some obstacles could lie ahead.

“America faces serious national security challenges, and Congress must act quickly to deliver the full-year resources this moment requires,” McConnell said.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY NINE – FROM GOVERNMENT EXECUTIVE/THE DAILY MONTANAN

NEW TURMOIL OVER A POSSIBLE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

Congress must pass some sort of spending bill before Jan. 19, otherwise the departments and agencies funded by the Agriculture, Energy-Water, Military Construction-VA and Transportation-HUD spending measures would enter a shutdown.

By JENNIFER SHUTT and JACOB FISCHLER, JANUARY 12, 2024 09:32 AM ET

Meetings on Thursday between U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and conservative lawmakers led to speculation he was about to walk away from the bipartisan spending agreement he signed off on just this past weekend — a decision that would greatly increase the chances of a partial government shutdown next week.

At the Capitol, a small bloc of House GOP lawmakers who are frustrated with Johnson for brokering the spending deal with Democrats met with the speaker on the next steps in the government funding process.

While the spending deal is seen by many as a major step forward in moving toward consensus following months of tumult, certain GOP lawmakers want to see changes or possibly additions.

Those talks led to considerable confusion as to whether Johnson was considering a shift in the spending deal.

“Let me tell you what’s going on,” Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, told reporters outside his office. “We’re having thoughtful conversations about funding options and priorities. We had a cross section of members in today. We’ll continue having cross sections of members in. And while those conversations are going on, I’ve made no commitments. So if you hear otherwise it’s just simply not true. We’re looking forward to those conversations.”

Democrats and some Republican lawmakers expressed concern that Johnson might switch course just days before a government funding deadline that comes more than three months into the fiscal year.

Senate Appropriations Committee ranking member Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Thursday afternoon that her staff told her “there are rumors about that,” though she hadn’t heard from Johnson on the issue.

“I certainly hope that’s not true because it increases the chances of a government shutdown,” Collins said.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that senators would continue negotiations with the House based on the agreement for total spending levels that he and Johnson announced Sunday.

“Look, we have a topline agreement,” Schumer said. “Everybody knows to get anything done it has to be bipartisan. So we’re going to continue to work to pass a CR and avoid a shutdown.”

CR stands for “continuing resolution,” the name often given to the short-term spending bill that Congress approves to give themselves more time to negotiate agreement on the full-year spending bills.

Congress has passed two of those bills so far for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1 and the Senate is on track to vote on a third CR next week ahead of the Jan. 19 funding deadline for some of the annual bills.

Womack: A ‘flawed strategy’

Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash., hadn’t heard directly from Johnson about whether he planned to withdraw from the spending agreement as of Thursday afternoon.

“I’m doing my job according to the agreement we have and I’m moving forward,” Murray said.

That spending agreement would provide $886.3 billion in defense and $772.7 billion in domestic discretionary spending for the current fiscal year, which began back on Oct. 1.

Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., said Thursday afternoon that he expected to hear soon if Johnson was considering walking away from the topline deal, though he said that wouldn’t be wise.

“Renegotiating for purposes of appeasing a group of people, 100% of whom you’re not going to have, in my opinion, could be a flawed strategy,” Womack said, referring to the conservatives who have been calling for Johnson to scuttle the agreement.

That group of especially conservative Republicans, many of whom are members of the far-right Freedom Caucus, rarely, if ever, vote for spending bills. And it’s unlikely that they would vote for any full-year bills that can garner support in the Democratic Senate, let alone President Joe Biden’s signature.

Maryland Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer, the former House Democratic leader, said that if Johnson were to walk away from the spending deal it would affect his ability to negotiate agreements in the future.

“You can only do that so many times and have any credibility or respect for the way you do business,” Hoyer said.

House Republicans, Hoyer said, have remained a “deeply divided, divisive and dysfunctional party” despite removing their former speaker and electing Johnson to the role.

Congress must pass some sort of spending bill before Jan. 19, otherwise the departments and agencies funded by the Agriculture, Energy-Water, Military Construction-VA and Transportation-HUD spending measures would enter a shutdown.

The remaining departments and agencies funded through the annual appropriations process would shut down on Feb. 2 if the House and Senate haven’t come to agreement on either a short-term spending bill or the full-year bills before that deadline.

The Senate is on track to vote on a stopgap spending bill next week that would keep the federal government funded a bit longer. Schumer took steps Thursday to set up a procedural vote Tuesday that will require at least 60 senators to advance it toward final passage. The details of that stopgap spending bill haven’t been released.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a Thursday press briefing that House Republicans “need to keep their word,” on the spending deal agreement that Johnson made with Democrats over the weekend.

“We cannot have a shutdown,” she said. “That is their basic duty, to keep the government open.”

Ariana Figueroa contributed to this report.  

Daily Montanan is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Daily Montanan maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Darrell Ehrlick for questions: info@dailymontanan.com. Follow Daily Montanan on Facebook and Twitter.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY – FROM SPECTRUM NEWS VIA THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SPEAKER JOHNSON FACING CONSERVATIVE PUSHBACK OVER SPENDING DEAL HE STRUCK WITH DEMOCRATS

As Speaker Mike Johnson gathered House Republicans behind closed doors Wednesday to sell the spending deal he reached with Democrats, one thing quickly became clear: many GOP lawmakers weren't buying it.

PUBLISHED 7:46 AM ET Jan. 11, 2024

Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio left early, saying he'd had enough.

"I'm not going to sit there and listen to that drivel, because he has no plans to do anything but surrender," Davidson said.

In the afternoon, 13 Republicans refused to support a routine procedural vote setting the stage for considering three GOP-led bills. A similar revolt occurred in June when, for the first time in some 20 years, such a routine vote was defeated, essentially grinding the House to a halt.

"We needed to send a message that what's going on with this announced agreement is unacceptable," said Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., the chairman of House Freedom Caucus, made up many of the House's most conservative lawmakers.

House Republicans are off to a raucous start in their first week back in Washington after an extended holiday break. The open criticism of the speaker and the parliamentary standoff reflects deep divisions within the party that have continued despite new leadership, raising questions about his ability to unite the conference.

Most Republicans are still voicing support for Johnson, saying he is doing the best he can with such a slim majority and Democrats in control of the Senate and White House. But it took only eight Republicans to oust Rep. Kevin McCarthy as speaker last year — along with 208 Democrats. A similar revolt from just a handful of Republicans would leave Johnson vulnerable as well.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told Fox News he's not going to say what would trigger a motion by him to seek Johnson's removal, but "we've got to do better than this." Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said "a lot of people are talking about" a motion to vacate Johnson from the speakership. But the Tennessee Republican who helped oust McCarthy said he's personally not there "yet."

"There is a lot of division with the conference. We've got a brand new leader, but it's kind of the same ol' song and dance," Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., told reporters upon exiting Wednesday's closed-door meeting of House Republicans.

Facing reporters afterward, Johnson said he was not concerned about losing his job.

"Look, leadership is tough. You take a lot of criticism, but remember, I am a hardline conservative. That's what they used to call me," Johnson said. "I come from that camp." Camp Runamok

He called the spending deal a "down payment on restoring us to fiscal sanity in this country." He also said that if Republicans "demonstrate we govern well" it would help them grow their majority in the next Congress, which could help them get more of the spending cuts they want down the road.

"We're going to turn this thing completely around, and I can't wait to do it," Johnson said.

Many Republicans doubt that colleagues would want to put the House through more of the chaos that erupted when McCarthy was ousted. It took nearly three tense weeks to land on Johnson as a replacement for McCarthy. Johnson has been on the job for less than three months, having just recently filled out his staff.

"The reality is nobody wants to go through another speaker's campaign," said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla. "You can take somebody down once and say you're killing a tyrant. When you do it twice, you become an assassin. So I think the speaker is much more secure than people realize."

Government funding expires Jan. 19 for about 20% of the federal government, while the rest of the government is funded only through Feb. 2. The agreement that McCarthy negotiated with the White House called for capping defense spending at $886 billion and non-defense spending at about $704 billion for the current fiscal year, which began in October. A series of side agreements made as part of the debt ceiling deal lifts the non-defense spending to about $772 billion. @compare to billionaire list

In recent months, lawmakers have been working to incorporate that agreement into the spending bills that will fund the federal government for the year. House and Senate leaders announced their agreement on overall spending levels Sunday.

Johnson said when announcing the overall spending numbers that he was able to speed up the roughly $20 billion in cuts already agreed to for the Internal Revenue Service in the debt ceiling deal and rescind about $6 billion in COVID relief money not yet spent. He called it the most favorable budget agreement Republicans have achieved in over a decade.

However, McCarthy's debt ceiling deal was not popular with many House Republicans and contributed to his ouster. They were hoping Johnson would gain more non-defense spending cuts and do more to deter the historic number of people arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border from countries all over the world.

"We're not addressing the two greatest crises facing the country," Good said.

The GOP infighting gives Democrats that chance to highlight the division going into an election year.

"These guys are unable to govern and they're unfit to govern and that's what you saw today," said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass.

The debate over this year's spending bills is separate from the negotiations that are taking place to secure additional funding for Israel and Ukraine. That funding is a top priority of the Biden administration, but Republicans are insisting that such a package contain tougher immigration restrictions.

Johnson met for nearly two hours after the floor debacle with hard-right Republicans, who emerged satisfied afterward that the new speaker was considering their frustrations and changing course. Good left saying they were on a better "path forward."

Many Republicans believe Johnson got what he could given the slim majority and debt ceiling agreement he inherited.

"He's doing the best he can under the circumstances," said Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn.

"When you barely control one house of Congress and you don't control the executive branch, you're not dealing with the strongest hand to begin with. I think most people who are practical understand that. We'll just see how many practical people there are in the next few days," said Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY ONE – FROM THE HILL

MORNING REPORT — GOVERNMENT FUNDING DEAL ON THIN ICE

Congress is staring down yet another government shutdown deadline, and a deal is looking further and further out of reach.

BY ALEXIS SIMENDINGER AND KRISTINA KARISCH - 01/12/24 6:28 AM ET

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Thursday it’s “crystal clear” that Congress won’t be able to pass the regular spending bills by the Jan. 19 deadline, and he announced that senators will instead vote next week on a short-term funding measure to avoid a government shutdown (The Hill).

“The most immediate need in the calendar is avoiding a government shutdown and fully funding the government for fiscal year 2024,” he said, warning: “A shutdown is looming over us.”

The procedural move would buy congressional leaders some time to hammer out a deal, a task that’s looking increasingly complicated as hard-line House conservatives balk at the proposed spending numbers. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) was among four bipartisan congressional leaders who endorsed an agreement Sunday establishing the top-line numbers dictating the funding for federal agencies through the remainder of fiscal 2024, which ends on Oct. 1. The White House is also on board.

A LATE PUSH FROM HOUSE CONSERVATIVES to get Johnson to back out of a just-announced top-line spending deal with Democrats is frustrating Republicans on both sides of the Capitol. Members of the Freedom Caucus and other conservatives derailed unrelated legislation on the House floor in a protest vote Wednesday. On Thursday, those same members allowed the leadership’s floor agenda to get back on track — but only after they buttonholed Johnson to try to get him to renegotiate the bipartisan spending deal to seek deeper cuts (The Hill).

“That’s pretty nasty. It’s ridiculous,” Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) said, noting that the same members have continually complained about spending deals over the past year. “At some point when you have people complain all the time, it’s like crying wolf. It just lacks credibility anymore.”

Backing out of the deal would throw massive uncertainty into how Congress will avoid a government shutdown ahead of the Jan. 19 and Feb. 2 funding deadlines — and through the rest of the fiscal year that ends on Sept. 30 (The Hill).

“Good luck,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said with apparent sarcasm regarding the effort. “I mean, the House is going to have to do what the House is going to do, but agreement has been reached, and let’s, let’s move on.”

Sound familiar? Similar procedural blocks paved the way for the eventual ouster of Johnson’s predecessor, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Freedom Caucus members have signaled their willingness to boot Johnson, too (The Hill and Roll Call).

Schumer must also decide what to do about the long-stalled rail safety bill sponsored by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). Brown faces a tough reelection, and his winning or losing could make or break the Senate Democratic majority, The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports, and the bill’s passage would be a major victory for the three-term senator. But Schumer hasn’t been able to find floor time for the measure, which faces significant opposition from the rail industry.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY TWO – FROM CNBC

Days from government shutdown, Speaker Johnson may need short-term spending bill he previously opposed

By REBECCA PICCIOTTO, PUBLISHED WED, JAN 10 2024 11:58 AM EST UPDATED WED, JAN 10 2024 12:17 PM EST

KEY POINTS

· Senate Republicans are growing doubtful that a government shutdown can be avoided without a short-term spending bill, which House Speaker Mike Johnson has previously rebuffed.

· Congress has until Jan. 19 to settle on four appropriation measures to keep the government open.

· Johnson is balancing that looming government shutdown with demands of hardline House Republicans who ousted his predecessor in part for conceding to Democrats in budget negotiations. Senate Republicans repeatedly said this week that a short-term spending bill may be necessary to keep the government open, a harsh reality for House Speaker Mike Johnson, who is balancing a looming shutdown deadline with the demands of hardline Republicans.

The last temporary spending bill Congress passed, in November, established a laddered schedule of funding deadlines, the first on Jan. 19 and the other on Feb. 2. On Sunday, members of Congress reached an agreement on a topline spending bill, but still have to negotiate four separate appropriations bills by Jan. 19 to keep the government open.

As the first deadline approaches, members have expressed growing doubt on whether a shutdown can be avoided without another continuing resolution, or CR.

“Time is so compressed and the deadline so short that I’m afraid we’re looking at another short-term continuing resolution,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, in an interview Wednesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Cornyn echoes Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who both said this week that a stopgap funding measure is looking increasingly inevitable.

Meanwhile, eyes are on Johnson to follow through on the hardline Republican demands he was elected to champion. If not, he could meet the same fate as his predecessor, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who was ousted in part for conceding to Democrats to avoid a government shutdown.

Johnson said he is planning to call former President Donald Trump on Wednesday to “talk him through the details” of the budget negotiations.

“He and I have a very close relationship,” Johnson said Wednesday on “The Hugh Hewitt Show.” “He’s been an enthusiastic supporter of my leadership here, and I expect he’ll be doing that again.”

While following through on the hardline demands would earn Johnson points with some House Republicans, it makes negotiating with Democrats harder, adding time to budget talks that he does not have.

Another CR would be a tough pill to swallow for Johnson, who has pledged to break the pattern of funding the government via short spurts instead of a cohesive budget.

“I think operating by CRs and shutting down the government is a dereliction of duty. I don’t think it’s the way it’s supposed to be done,” Johnson said at a Wall Street Journal conference in December. “And what we’re going to try to do in the coming year is get us back to that process that the law requires that we won’t be in this situation again.”

Congress left for the holiday season with many issues unresolved, punting negotiations to 2024. As time dwindles, Johnson may be forced to break his no-CR promise.

To add to Johnson’s dilemmas, hardline House Republicans may not afford him the same leeway as in November when he was just under a month into his speaker tenure and conceded spending cuts to Democrats to pass the temporary funding bill.

“For now, I am pleased that Speaker Johnson seems to be moving in our direction by advancing a CR that does not include the highly partisan cuts that Democrats have warned against,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said at the time.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY THREE – FROM THE NEW YORK POST

HOUSE GOPERS SEETHE AT SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON OVER $1.66T SPENDING DEAL WITH DEMS: ‘TOTAL FAILURE’

By  Ryan King Published Jan. 8, 2024, 12:24 p.m. ET

· Nancy Pelosi’s huge portfolio gains again make the case for banning stock-trading in Congress

· Speaker Johnson unveils long-elusive deal to avert shutdown as border compromise takes shape

· Boebert denies punching ex-husband after he was ‘aggressive’ during public argument that sparked police call

· Mike Pence rebuffs Trump’s claim FBI orchestrated Jan. 6 Capitol riot: ‘Not the instigators’

Republican hardliners in Congress are stewing over a deal Speaker Mike Johnson hammered out with Democrats to stave off a partial government shutdown from beginning later this month.

Congressional leaders rolled out the approximately $1.66 trillion top-line spending deal Sunday, charting out a path to keeping DC fully functional — only for fiscal hawks to complain Johnson (R-La.) had ceded too much ground to Democrats.

The howling from Johnson’s right flank is reminiscent of the spending flap that doomed his predecessor as speaker, former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) three months ago.

Revolt from the right

Johnson had presented the deal as a $1.59 trillion discretionary budget pact, with $888 billion for defense and $704 billion for nondefense spending.

However, the deal is paired with $69 billion in further spending, bolstering the topline number for fiscal year 2024, which ends Sept. 30.

“It’s even worse than we thought. Don’t believe the spin,” the conservative House Freedom Caucus fumed on X.

“Once you break through typical Washington math, the true total programmatic spending level is $1.658 trillion — not $1.59 trillion. This is total failure.”

McCarthy had presided over a $1.59 trillion spending agreement as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling reached in May of last year.

Even that wasn’t enough for some Republicans, who pushed for spending to be cut closer to the $1.47 trillion mark.

Last November, the Freedom Caucus’s leadership appeared to signal a softening stance in the face of Democratic intransigence.

A month later, the group sounded the alarms about possible side deals forged by GOP and Democratic leadership.

With Sunday’s announcement, those grievances have become public again.

“I am a NO to the Johnson Schumer budget deal,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) posted on X Sunday night.

“This $1.6 Trillion dollar budget agreement does nothing to secure the border, stop the invasion, or stop the weaponized government targeting Biden’s political enemies and innocent Americans. So much for the power of the purse.”

Greene had been a key ally of McCarthy despite breaking from him on some issues.

“A $1[.]659 [trillion] topline in spending is terrible & gives away the leverage accomplished in the (already not great) caps deal. We’ll wait to see if we get meaningful policy riders,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) posted on X.

“1) the NDAA was not a good preview, & 2) as usual, we keep spending more money we don’t have.”

Johnson argued in a “Dear Colleague” letter Sunday that the spending blueprint would tee up a “fight for the important policy riders.”

“If this is the best Republicans can do, there’s no hope of ever balancing our budget or securing the border,” lamented Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC).

“Republicans agreeing to spending levels $69 billion higher than last summer’s debt ceiling ‘deal’, with no significant policy wins is nothing but another loss for America. At some point, having the House majority has to matter. Stop funding this spending with an open border!” added newly minted Freedom Caucus chairman Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.).

Some Republicans defend the plan

Despite the anger of some conservatives, other Republicans backed Johnson.

“I’m encouraged that the Speaker and Democratic Leaders have identified a path toward completing FY 2024 appropriations,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Sunday.

“America faces serious national security challenges, and Congress must act quickly to deliver the full-year resources this moment requires.”

A handful of rank-and-file Republicans needled their peers over the high expectations set for the appropriations process.

“Are we learning that negotiating with the Democrats in the White House and Senate with a slim majority is hard and you can’t get everything you want, no matter who is in the Speaker’s office?” asked Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) on X.

“If you don’t let your leaders lead, then you end up in chaos. And so it just gets to be the point now where, how much can you just say no and remain … credible,” Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC) told Fox News.

Johnson himself highlighted a handful of Republican gains from the pact, namely the “more than $16 billion in additional spending cuts to offset the discretionary spending levels.”

Politico reported that the framework figure was $30 billion less than what Senate Democrats sought.

A delicate dance for Johnson

Now that the top-line spending levels appear to be ironed out between the two chambers, Congress must now embark on a mad dash to shove through 12 appropriations bills before the shutdown deadlines of Jan. 19 and Feb. 2

If Congress still has a stopgap continuing resolution in place instead of regular appropriations funding by the end of April, then that could trigger automatic cuts, according to Democrat appropriators.

Johnson has previously ruled out another stopgap spending patch.

Also complicating the matter are calls by some conservatives to couple GOP demands for border security with legislation to avert a shutdown.

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), one of the top negotiators on a border deal in the Senate, said Sunday that lawmakers will drop text on a supplemental spending bill “hopefully this week.”

Republicans have also demanded border security boosts in exchange for supplemental aid to war-torn Ukraine, which is expected to run dry within the coming weeks.

One silver lining for Johnson in the spending row is that a bevy of Democrats have signaled support for the package.

Back in May, 71 Republicans voted “nay” on the debt ceiling compromise, but 165 Democrats helped pass it.

Currently, the House has 220 Republicans and 213 Democrats, with the GOP number expected to drop to 219 when Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) resigns later this month to take up the presidency of Youngstown State University.

Also, Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) is expected to be absent for much of January to receive treatment for blood cancer, further dwindling the GOP number.

Johnson’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment

ATTACHMENT THIRTY FOUR – FROM THE NEW YORK POST

US $34 TRILLION NATIONAL DEBT IS ‘BOILING FROG’ SCENARIO FOR ECONOMY: ANALYST

By Ariel Zilber Published Jan. 8, 2024, 1:13 p.m. ET

The country’s soaring national debt — which recently surpassed a record-high $34 trillion — is akin to a “boiling frog” for the economy and Wall Street investors, a senior analyst at JPMorgan Chase warned.

Michael Cembalest, who runs JPMorgan’s market and investment strategy unit in the bank’s asset management division, predicted dire consequences for the economy if the Biden administration doesn’t start tackling the debt.

Cembalest wrote in a newsletter published last week by JPMorgan that the country cannot sustain higher deficits and ballooning net interest payments, which are soon expected to exceed the federal government’s total revenue by early next decade.

“The problem for the US is the starting point; every round of fiscal stimulus brings the US one step closer to debt unsustainability,” Cembalest wrote in the newsletter titled “Pillow Talk.”

“However, we’re accustomed to deteriorating US government finances with limited consequences for investors, and one day that may change (the boiling frog analogy).”

The “boiling frog” concept comes from a metaphor used to describe a situation whereby an undesirable set of circumstances is tolerated for an extended period of time — such as a frog that is thrown into water that is gradually heated.

Once the circumstances become too dire — and the water is heated to a boil — it is too late for the frog to act and it is cooked alive.

Cembalest predicted that by early next decade, “all Federal government revenues will be consumed by entitlement payments and interest on the Federal debt.”

“Entitlement payments” refer to Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, unemployment insurance and other aspects of the federal welfare safety net.

Cembalest wrote that before the next decade he anticipates that “a combination of market pressure and rating agency downgrades” will “force the US to make substantial changes to taxes and entitlements.”

In November, Moody’s lowered the US government’s credit ratings outlook from “stable” to “negative.”

Last summer, Fitch Rating downgraded the federal government’s long-term credit rating from AAA to AA+.

The national debt, which is the total amount of outstanding borrowing by the federal government, stood at $34.006 trillion as of Monday, according to the Treasury Department’s official debt tracker.

The Congressional Budget Office’s January 2020 projections had gross federal debt eclipsing $34 trillion in fiscal year 2029.

But the debt grew faster than expected because of increased government spending caused by the pandemic 2020 that shut down much of the US economy.

The government borrowed heavily under then President Donald Trump and current President Joe Biden to stabilize the economy and support a recovery.

But the rebound came with a surge of inflation that pushed up interest rates and made it more expensive for the government to service its debts.

On Sunday, Congress agreed on a $1.59 trillion spending deal to avoid another government shutdown.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY FIVE – FROM SALON

"SUICIDE FOR THE GOP": REPUBLICANS FREAK OUT AFTER "F**KING IDIOTS" PUSH TO OUST HOUSE SPEAKER AGAIN

“It would be the dumbest move ever," says Republican Rep. Don Bacon

By GABRIELLA FERRIGINE PUBLISHED JANUARY 10, 2024 11:11AM (EST)

Some Republicans are already grumbling about ousting House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., just months after he was elected.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, during a Monday interview with CNN's Kaitlan Collins, floated the possibility of pushing Johnson out of the role, observing that colleagues "are really frustrated” with the House Speaker.

Roy, who is also the chair of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus that partly drove out former Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., also mentioned “real conversations this week about what [House Republicans] need to do going forward,” saying that the situation was “[not] good.”

Roy is seemingly not the only member of the GOP who is discontented with how Johnson is faring — The New Republic cited reports that indicated some conservatives are growing increasingly uneasy. 

"This don't feel like a victory, bro": MAGA melts down at GOP speaker for averting shutdown

“Significant concerns growing about Mike’s ability to jump to this level and deliver conservative wins, a "well connected" House Republican told PunchBowl News. "Growing feeling that he’s in way, way over his head. As much as there was valid criticism and frustration with Kevin, Mike is struggling to grow into the job and is just getting rolled even more than McCarthy did.”

As The New Republic noted, GOP dissatisfaction with Johnson seems to be emanating from his perceived cooperation with President Joe Biden and House Democrats on spending bills and related legislation. Johnson faced sharp resistance after striking a $1.66 trillion deal with Democratic Majority leader Chuck Schumer, N.Y., over the weekend.

"The agreement essentially hews to the bargain that Congress passed last year to suspend the debt ceiling, which the hard right opposed at the time and had hoped to scale back," The New York Times reported. "It also includes $69 billion in spending that was added as a side deal, money that conservatives sought to block altogether."

Following news of Johnson's potential ousting, far-right GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Ga., came to his defense. Greene referred to Roy's suggestion of booting Johnson as "the dumbest thing that could happen," and went on to cite the political mayhem that ensued after Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., led a coup and introduced the same motion against McCarthy. 

“I mean, look at the results we have now. We haven’t passed any more appropriation bills since they threw out Kevin McCarthy," Greene said. "We have expelled a Republican member of Congress, we’re reducing our numbers. I’m kind of sick of the chaos (@like Haley?). I came here to be serious about solving problems, not to produce clickbait."

Moderate Republicans have also warned against the plan.

“If they try it, they are fucking idiots,” Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., told Semafor. 

“I kind of doubt anyone wants to go through that three-ring circus again,” another unnamed House Republican told the outlet. 

“It would be the dumbest move ever and the counter-reaction from the 95% of our conference who want to govern and who know the realities of our Constitutional system and divided government would be fierce,” added Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb. “We just have a few people who think they’re the only people who count and ignore that we have divided government. They’d be threatening Moses taking them to the Promised Land.”

Political strategists warned that moving to oust Johnson would blow back on the party. 

"I would think that even they realize vacating the speakership this soon would be a major mistake. The more likely path is the rabble-rousers will b**ch, moan, feign outrage, and fundraise off it. It's all so tiresome and becoming trite," Republican strategist Alex Patton told Newsweek.

"There is little [the House GOP] can do to stop it other than threatening the career of a member who runs with it,"  added political consultant Jay Townsend, adding that it would be "suicide for the GOP" and serve as "proof" that the party is a "grievance-driven creature incapable of governing."

ATTACHMENT THITY SIX – FROM CRFB

UPCOMING CONGRESSIONAL FISCAL POLICY DEADLINES

JAN 9, 2024 

Updated 1/17/2024: The Senate has advanced a third continuing resolution (CR) for fiscal year 2024 to avoid a partial government shutdown at midnight on Friday, Jan. 19. The new measure would extend the "laddered" approach from the current CR, with the first set of appropriations bills expiring on Friday, March 1: Agriculture, Energy-Water, Military Construction-VA, and Transportation-HUD (these are currently set to expire Jan. 19). The second set of appropriations bills would expire a week later, on Friday, March 8: Commerce-Justice-Science, Defense, Financial Services-General Government, Homeland Security, Interior-Environment, Labor-HHS-Education, Legislative Branch, and State-Foreign Operations bills (these are currently set to expire two weeks after the first deadline, on Friday, Feb. 2). The pending CR would also extend several expiring policy deadlines to March 8. 

Congressional leaders announced a deal on topline appropriations levels for fiscal year 2024 on Sunday, Jan. 7, which could pave the way for completion of appropriations in the coming weeks. The agreement provides for a total of $773 billion in nondefense discretionary spending, including $704 billion in base nondefense spending and $69 billion in side deals, and $886 billion in defense spending.  

Under the second, "laddered" continuing resolution (CR) for FY 2024, the first set of appropriations bills expires on Friday, Jan. 19: Agriculture, Energy-Water, Military Construction-VA, and Transportation-HUD. The second set of appropriations bills expires two weeks later, on Friday, Feb. 2: Commerce-Justice-Science, Defense, Financial Services-General Government, Homeland Security, Interior-Environment, Labor-HHS-Education, Legislative Branch, and State-Foreign Operations bills. Besides extending appropriations, the measure also included several policy extensions through Jan. 19 for certain health care programs and a farm bill extension through FY 2024. 

The next few years will include several predictable fiscal policy deadlines that will force congressional action. Many of the deadlines could bring additional costs if Congress acts irresponsibly, or they could present an opportunity for Congress to reduce deficits.

We will regularly update this tracker to help reporters, congressional staff, and others interested in fiscal policy keep tabs on major deadlines. We recommend that you bookmark it and come back to check in.

Congress may be compelled to act on each of these dates or enact short-term extensions or policy modifications to move the deadlines to buy time for action. 

Issue	Deadline	More Information
FCC Spectrum Auction Authority	March 9, 2023	Authority for the FCC to grant a license or construction permit through its competitive bidding system expires. The House passed a bill to extend the authority through May 19, but the Senate has not yet acted on it.
Medicaid Assistance for States	March 31, 2023/June 30, 2023/September 30, 2023/December 31, 2023	The Medicaid federal medical assistance percentage (FMAP) for states has been temporarily enhanced since the first round of COVID legislation in 2020. A transition plan included in the FY 2023 omnibus continues the 6.2 percentage point bonus for the first quarter of 2023, reduces it to 5 points in the second quarter, reduces it to 2.5 points in the third quarter, and provides a 1.5 point bonus for the fourth quarter.
Child Care Funds Expire	September 30, 2023	Both the CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan provided funds for child care facilities to help them remain accessible and financially stable during the COVID-19 pandemic, both through the child care and development block grant and through child care stabilization grants. Many of the funds expired at the end of FY 2023.
Medicare Physician Payments	December 31, 2023/December 31, 2024/December 31, 2025	A temporary 3 percent bonus payment for physicians for 2022 was enacted in late 2021. The FY 2023 omnibus modified that bonus structure, providing 2.5% for 2023 and 1.25% in 2024. In addition, the omnibus provided a one-year extension of the bonus for providers who are part of Alternative Payment Models, through performance year 2023 (or payment year 2025), reduced to 3.5 percent from 5 percent. The bill also extends the 50 percent revenue thresholds for qualification for the APM bonuses through payment year 2025/performance year 2023.
Medicare Redesign & Drug Costs	January 1, 2024	Medicare Part D redesign begins, with some reduced costs in 2024 and seniors' drug costs in Medicare capped at $2,000 in 2025.
Funding the Government / Appropriations (First set of bills)	January 19, 2024	Congress enacted a second FY 2024 continuing resolution on Nov. 16 that funds Agriculture, Energy-Water, Military Construction-VA, and Transportation-HUD programs through mid-January. Discretionary spending for FY 2024 and FY 2025 will be subject to statutory caps enacted in the Fiscal Responsibility Act. Q&A: Everything You Should Know About Government Shutdowns; Appropriations Watch
Medicaid Policies & Health Care Extenders	January 19, 2024	Medicaid Disproportionate Hospital cuts were scheduled begin at the start of FY 2024 and continue through FY 2027. A delay was included in the second FY 2024 continuing resolution through mid-January. Various Medicare and human services extenders also expire.
Funding the Government / Appropriations (Second set of bills)	February 2, 2024	Congress enacted a second FY 2024 continuing resolution on Nov. 16 that funds Commerce-Justice-Science, Defense, Financial Services-General Government, Homeland Security, Interior-Environment, Labor-HHS-Education, Legislative Branch, and State-Foreign Operations programs until early February. Discretionary spending for FY 2024 and FY 2025 will be subject to statutory caps enacted in the Fiscal Responsibility Act. Q&A: Everything You Should Know About Government Shutdowns; Appropriations Watch
National Flood Insurance Program Authorization Expires	February 2, 2024	An extension was included in the second FY 2024 continuing resolution through early February. More on NFIP
Authorization of TANF & Related Programs Expires	February 2, 2024	Extensions were included in the second FY 2024 continuing resolution through early February.
FAA Reauthorization	March 8, 2024	The current authorization law for Federal Aviation Administration operational, safety, and infrastructure programs expires under the existing extension. Multi-year reauthorization bills have advanced in the House and Senate. A three-month extension was included in the continuing resolution for the first seven weeks of FY 2024, followed by a two-month extension enacted at the end of December.
Continuing Resolution Penalty	May 1, 2024	The Fiscal Responsibility Act includes a penalty for the use of a continuing resolution (CR) in FY 2024, reducing both defense and nondefense funding levels by 1 percent if appropriations bills are not enacted by January, but it would actually take effect at the beginning of May through a sequestration order to be issued by April 30, 2024. (A similar penalty and timeline also apply for FY 2025.)
Additional Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan Benefits	July 2024	Under the Biden administration's Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan, a new income-driven repayment program launched in summer 2023 in response to the Supreme Court ruling blocking the administration's student loan forgiveness plan, certain policies will be implemented next year. Changes taking effect in July 2024 include a reduction in undergraduate student loan payments by half and forgiveness of remaining balances after 10 years of payments for original principal balances of $12,000 or less, among others. Additional fixes were announced in October 2023.
Agriculture and Nutrition Programs	September 30, 2024	The most recent farm bill is expired at the end of FY 2023, including crop insurance, nutrition programs such as SNAP, rural development, and agricultural research and conservation programs. The second FY 2024 continuing resolution included an extension through the end of FY 2024.
Statutory PAYGO	December 2024 or January 2025	Statutory pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) rules provide for an across-the-board sequester of non-exempt mandatory spending programs if lawmakers enact net deficit-increasing legislation over the course of the year. A provision in the FY 2023 omnibus shifted the sequestration totals from the 2023 and 2024 scorecards and added them to the 2025 scorecard. Statutory PAYGO requires the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to issue a sequestration order within 15 days of the end of a congressional session.

Longer-Term Deadlines

· Early-to-mid 2025: Debt limit suspension ends on January 1, 2025; extraordinary measures will likely allow for the government to continue to meet its obligations for a few months after that date.

· End of FY 2025: Statutory discretionary spending caps enacted in the Fiscal Responsibility Act expire. (Targets for spending that are not backed by sequestration remain through FY 2029.)

· End of calendar year 2025: Increased and expanded Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies expire. (The American Rescue Plan temporarily increased premium tax credits for assistance in buying health insurance from state-based marketplaces created by the ACA and expanded eligibility for premium tax credits to individuals with incomes exceeding 400 percent of the federal poverty line, but only through the end of 2022. The Inflation Reduction Act extended those subsidies for three years, through 2025.) 

· End of calendar year 2025: TCJA individual income tax provisions expire; TCJA paid family leave credit expires; employer-paid student loans income exclusion expires; multiple tax extenders expire such as Empowerment Zones incentives, film and live performances expensing, and the wind energy investment tax credit; health extenders including the Rural Community Hospital Demonstration program; tax exclusion for student debt forgiveness ends.

· End of FY 2026: Surface transportation programs authorization provided by Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act expires; Export-Import Bank authorization expires

· End of FY 2027: Maternal, Infant, & Early Childhood Home Visiting expiration, Food & Drug Administration user fee programs expiration

· FY 2028: Highway Trust Fund insolvency

· FY 2031: Medicare Hospital Insurance (Part A) Trust Fund exhaustion (CBO's June 2023 long-term budget outlook estimated insolvency in 2035)

· FY 2033: Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund exhaustion (combined OASI and SSDI exhaustion date is 2034; CBO's June 2023 long-term budget outlook estimated OASI insolvency in 2032, SSDI insolvency in 2052 and combined OASI and SSDI exhaustion in 2033)

Upcoming Supreme Court Cases with Potential Fiscal Effects (2023-2024)

· Charles G. Moore v. United States (Challenges taxation of repatriated earnings and unrealized income.) 

· Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Association of America (Challenges funding structure for Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is funded through the Federal Reserve outside of the normal appropriations process.)

Upcoming Executive Branch Rulemaking with Potential Fiscal Effects

· Regulations on reporting of sales and exchanges of digital assets by brokers (Treasury; considering first year of implementation of Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act tax provision in 2026, for sales and exchanges of digital assets in 2025) 

· Section 30D New Clean Vehicle Credit (Treasury; considering critical mineral and battery component requirements for the tax credit for purchase of qualifying new clean vehicles created by the IRA)

· Multi-pollutant vehicle emissions standards (EPA; considering new emissions standards for light-duty and medium-duty vehicles starting with model year 2027 and phasing in through 2032 with separate rulemaking for heavy-duty vehicles.)

· Additional student debt relief (Education; considering policy changes for borrowers whose balances are greater than what they originally borrowed, whose loans first entered repayment decades ago, who attended programs that did not provide sufficient financial value, who are eligible for relief but have not applied, and additional borrowers who have experienced financial hardship and need support.)

· Updates to WIC food packages (Agriculture; considering changes to the foods prescribed to participants in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) that would increase the current level of assistance while providing state agencies with more flexibility to tailor the packages.)

ATTACHMENT THIRTY SEVEN – FROM THE FEDERAL NEWS NETWORK

CONGRESS LABORS TO KEEP THE BUDGET DEAL ALIVE

By Tom Temin January 16, 2024 1:21 pm

The continuing resolution funding the government runs out Friday at 11:59 p.m. So far the spending limits Republicans and Democrats agreed to, a week or so ago, have not translated into bills for full 2024 appropriations. That means neither a long-term continuing resolution nor a shutdown is off the table. For the latest, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with WTOP Capitol Hill correspondent Mitchell Miller.

Interview Transcript:   

Mitchell Miller Right now things are looking better, but things were not looking good heading into the weekend. But during the weekend things changed. House speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announcing plans for this new twostep short term spending agreement. It would go beyond this Friday’s deadline and a February 2nd deadline and extend spending through March 1st and March 8th. The state of the Union address is March 7th. First deadline would be for a partial government shutdown, as the current one is now with spending for four appropriations bills. The Senate today plans to take a procedural vote to set things in motion. This continuing resolution is expected to get through the Senate, and then there will be a House vote, which, as usual, will include some drama. Conservatives have already made it clear they don’t want another short-term spending bill, and they’re going to vote against it. Speaker Johnson is again going to need the help of Democrats to get this legislation passed, as he did the last time. Also, to avoid a partial government shutdown, two thirds of the House will need to approve this, but I think it will get done since lawmakers have little choice.

Tom Temin Well, if they agreed on a top line number, why can’t they get to a spending bill?

Mitchell Miller I think for a couple of reasons. One, that House speaker Mike Johnson is new in this position and still trying to get his footing. And secondly, the outsized influence of the House Freedom Caucus. Since the Republican majority is so small, Johnson has, like former Speaker Kevin McCarthy before him, tried to listen to all members of this unwieldy GOP conference. So last week he met with various Republican groups, including hard line conservatives who he’s been close to before becoming speaker. They essentially said, you haven’t been tough enough with the Senate on issues like the southern border and pushing for deeper spending cuts. And after their meeting last week, some thought they had caused the speaker to open up the possibility of reopening negotiations on that top line budget number. But he later indicated he was just keeping an open mind and also met with more moderate members of the conference. Most Republicans fully understand that there’s no way to quickly pass 12 appropriations bills, and I believe the thinking here is, no matter what Johnson does, the House Freedom Caucus is going to be unhappy with him. So he’s going to, again, rely on Democrats, as I mentioned, to avoid a shutdown, while at the same time looking over his shoulder, hoping no conservative makes a motion to vacate the chair, as they did with Kevin McCarthy, who went from being speaker of the House to no longer being in Congress.

Tom Temin You know, and if they remove Johnson and then he leaves the Congress, I mean, the Republican majority is slipping away like sands through an hourglass here.

Mitchell Miller It really is. I mean, right now we’re down to a two-vote majority, in part because the former House speaker, who would have thought that actually left Congress? And then you had George Santos being kicked out of Congress. So, you start losing more, and there are retirements on the way as well. They literally are down to, as you say, the sands in the hourglass, 1 or 2 or even no votes if things continue to move the way they are.

Tom Temin And you spoke to some of the lawmakers in the Senate and the House on the Democratic side, and they’re kind of scratching their heads, sounds like.

Mitchell Miller Right. Well, for one thing, related to the deal on the top line, former House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Maryland congressman, he’s been through a lot of these. He said, when you reach a deal, you want to have a deal. You don’t want to have to keep renegotiating deal after deal after deal. So, he’s concerned about it. I talked to Senator Mark Warner and Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia. Both are once again very concerned about the impact this is going to have, because it raises all the uncertainty for federal workers, not to mention contractors with the federal government. They said that they’re feeling like it’s a bad movie all over again.

Tom Temin We’re speaking with Mitchell Miller, WTOP Capitol Hill correspondent, and tell us more about what has been happening with the IRS. They got not appropriated money from the regular spending, but they got this $80 billion, ostensibly over ten years. But that 60 billion is shrinking, even though it didn’t come from appropriation, normal appropriations that came from the I think it was the infrastructure bill.

Mitchell Miller Right. That was also part of this top line agreement where Democrats wanted to basically throw a bone to the House speaker and said, okay, you can cut away $20 billion to the IRS, but they still have $60 billion that they’re now pouring into improving infrastructure within the agency as well as IT. And one positive note that came out for the IRS was the report from the National Taxpayer Advocate in the letter to Congress. Last week, basically saying that things while they are not quite exactly back to normal. Remember we talked a lot about those backlogs with the IRS and tax forms and people not being able to get through on the phone and get assistance. A lot of improvement in that area. Not to say that it’s all perfect, obviously, but that report indicated a lot of optimism that this is really starting to turn around. And the supporters of the funding, many of them Democrats, say that this is really going to help, ultimately over the long haul, allowing taxpayers to get the assistance they need. Of course, on the other side, a lot of Republicans say this is terrible because it’s going to come down harder on people that don’t make a ton of money. And there’s been a lot of hyperbole, frankly, about what taAgents are going to do. But nonetheless, I think that big aircraft carrier that is the IRS agency is slightly starting to turn around now.

Tom Temin All right. And, you know, we had the incident of the secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, being a little not quite a wall, but disappeared for a few days. Now we understand, you know, that from published reports that he’s directing the bombing of the Houthis from his hospital bed. What a great country, huh? So, any reaction on Hill or any action likely to be taken because even some Democrats were saying, hmm, this doesn’t look so good, right?

Mitchell Miller That was one of the things that Senator Tim Kaine said he had some issues with. He’s a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He doesn’t think that necessarily, as some people said, that maybe the defense secretary should resign. But clearly, I think there is a push among lawmakers to clarify what happens when you have, admittedly, maybe a rare incident like this. I mean, it’s certainly something that got a lot of attention, especially when we learned that he has a form of cancer. But a lot of people also don’t want to come down too hard on him. Uh, there was a lot of things, as you know, that happened at that time. He had another person who was very high ranking who was out sick. But really, when you’re talking about matters of war, as you just mentioned, you have to have a clear line of where things are going if somebody is out. And that’s where I think the lawmakers are really going to make a push.

Tom Temin And I wonder if underlying that concern is the is the slight drone of the fact that his condition might be more serious than even we know now, because a prostatectomy that’s pretty radical because most men that have a prostate problem, even cancer, there are much less radical ways of dealing with it. Right.

Mitchell Miller And so I think that he was hopeful, as many people would be in a health situation like that, that it could be taken care of fairly quickly. I have heard medical experts say that clearly, that there were complications. And I think that also contributed to the uncertainty that maybe he was thinking, okay, I can get this done fairly quickly and move on. And as we know with health, you just don’t know what’s going to happen. And I think that uncertainty is what makes a lot of people nervous on Capitol Hill.

Tom Temin All right. So, what’s going to happen this week then there’s more Hunter Biden stuff maybe in the budget.

Mitchell Miller Well there’s not going to be a lot of surprises. Maybe not on the level of Hunter Biden. That was quite an incident last week. But I think we’re going to just get into that crunch time again over the next few days. You know, we’re coming off a holiday. And as we talked about this at the end of last year, there wasn’t going to be enough time to get to all of these bills. And I think they have no choice really, but to go for a continuing resolution. I think the real question will be how long is it going to be right?

Tom Temin And if it goes for the rest of the fiscal year, then sequestration occurs. So that might please the more conservative end of the Republicans because it brings cuts automatically.

Mitchell Miller Right. And that was the whole idea behind the debt ceiling agreement. On the other hand, a lot of people say they don’t want a long-term agreement talking about the military, because if you lock in those figures, they say that’s effectively a cut for the Pentagon.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY EIGHT – FROM ABC

CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS ANNOUNCE SPENDING DEAL THAT WOULD AVERT NEXT GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

Federal funding is set to run out as soon as this month.

ByRachel Scott and Allison Pecorin January 7, 2024, 4:26 PM

Congressional leaders have at last reached agreement on the overall price tag of the next batch of government spending bills, lawmakers announced on Sunday -- a major step toward averting a partial shutdown that is set to begin later this month.

The deal would set top-line spending for fiscal year 2024 at $1.59 trillion, the amount originally agreed to by President Joe Biden and then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy during negotiations over the government's debt limit last year.

The framework proposes keeping in place the $886 billion agreed to for defense funding in the 2024 fiscal year while also maintaining the $704 billion in non-defense spending that Democrats insisted upon during the debt limit negotiations.

Agreeing on those figures allows lawmakers in the House and Senate to begin working on the text of individual spending bills -- an ongoing point of contention on Capitol Hill, particularly among House Republicans, a faction of whom ousted McCarthy in October amid infighting over how to move forward on spending legislation.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who was chosen to succeed McCarthy, confirmed the key details of the agreement in a letter to his colleagues on Sunday afternoon.

Johnson touted concessions Republicans secured in the deal, including an expedited $10 billion cut in funding to the IRS and a claw-back of about $6 billion in remaining COVID-19 relief funds.

Johnson, in his letter, conceded that the "final spending levels will not satisfy everyone, and they do not cut as much spending as many of us would like," but he noted that the agreement would allow the funding process to move forward while allowing negotiators to "reprioritize funding within the topline towards conservative objectives."

However, the new speaker could face an uphill battle selling this deal to some other conservatives. Many House Republicans wanted much more substantive cuts to the budget.

But the agreement does clear a pathway for lawmakers to begin working to try to quickly draft and pass spending bills before the first of the government funding deadlines on Jan. 19.

Agriculture, energy, housing, and transportation programs, among others, are all slated to run out of funds on that date under the last stopgap government funding bill passed by Congress in the fall.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries claimed in a joint statement on Sunday that the agreement was a win for Democrats in that it keeps intact Biden's negotiations while side-stepping Republican objection.

"The bipartisan topline appropriations agreement clears the way for Congress to act over the next few weeks in order to maintain important funding priorities for the American people ... The framework agreement to proceed will enable the appropriators to address many of the major challenges America faces at home and abroad," Schumer and Jeffries said.

Biden on Sunday expressed support for the funding framework, saying in a statement that it "rejects deep cuts to programs hardworking families count on."

The president also urged congressional Republicans to reach a deal on border funds and military aid for Israel and Ukraine, issues that remain tied up in Washington as conservatives push for major immigration policy changes.

Lawmakers will have to work quickly if they hope to strike a deal in time to stop the latest government shutdown.

Johnson wrote in his letter that he will fight for key policy riders that Republicans want. But Schumer and Jeffries in their statement said they've made clear to the speaker that they will oppose such "poison pill policy changes."

Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on her chamber's appropriations committee, said in a statement on Sunday that "we cannot afford to delay further, so I will be working with my colleagues around the clock in the coming days to prevent a needless shutdown and pass bipartisan spending bills free of partisan poison pills that protect key investments and help meet the challenges our constituents are facing."

ATTACHMENT THIRTY NINE – FROM CATO

HOW DOES THE CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT SPENDING DEAL MEASURE UP?

By Romina Boccia and Dominik Lett JANUARY 9, 2024 5:11PM

Whoever thought that the May 2023 debt limit deal settled debates over topline government funding levels for fiscal year (FY) 2024 was clearly mistaken. Now four months into FY2024, Congress has reportedly struck a deal to determine how much the US federal government will spend on defense and non‐defense appropriations, which account for roughly one‐third of the federal budget that’s subject to annual debate.

In the big picture, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R‑LA) is finding himself between the same rock and a hard place that his predecessor did. House Republicans do not have the option of passing a funding deal without Democratic support in the Senate, necessitating negotiations that require a give‐and‐take approach that will leave much to be desired for both sides of the political aisle.

The January 2024 funding deal bakes in higher government spending levels, with modest restraints from capping the use of budget gimmicks and holding the line on new emergency spending. On the flip side, this deal continues business as usual, relying on budget gimmicks and emergency designations to pad topline spending, while falling short of cutting spending back to pre‐pandemic levels or holding the line on limiting spending to no more than fiscal year 2023’s levels.

What this tells us is that neither Democrats nor Republicans are ready to face the US government’s rapidly deteriorating fiscal situation. This is a deal to avoid a government shutdown during an election year, but not much else.

The Spending is in the Details

The January 2024 spending deal includes $886.3 billion in defense and $772.7 billion in nondefense spending (base nondefense is $703.7) for a $1.659 trillion total. The nondefense topline includes $69 billion in extra spending originally agreed to in a May debt limit side deal between former House Speaker McCarthy (R‑CA) and the White House. It offsets some of this additional spending with cuts to the IRS ($20.2 billion) and by rescinding unspent COVID-19 and other emergency funds ($6.1 billion).

The deal also continues disaster‐related emergency spending, sticking with the previous year’s level of $12.5 billion (rather than the $23 billion the Senate was asking for). The common CHIMPs (changes in mandatory programs) gimmick is included as well but capped at a lower amount than was the case in the May debt limit agreement ($15 billion, instead of $25 billion). Earmarks will also rear their ugly head yet again.

Does this Deal Establish a New Precedent for Fiscal Restraint?

The Johnson‐Shumer budget deal fails to return discretionary spending to pre‐pandemic levels, boosting spending by about $300 billion, before accounting for the roughly 20 percent inflation the US experienced since 2020. The deal also boosts topline spending above 2023 levels, before accounting for inflation. The deal falls short by these objective measures of fiscal restraint.

It reduces spending compared to the May debt limit deal when accounting for side deals and rejects new emergency spending designations, as requested by Senate Democrats (we wrote about these previously here). As such, it secures a small victory for fiscal restraint. That is, assuming it holds, without additional emergency supplemental spending and other final budget shenanigans once the ink is dry.

This deal still has a long way to go before being enacted. Still up for discussion are GOP border measures, Biden’s emergency supplemental request to support Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and more, as well as policy riders, and whether Congress will try to address the broader fiscal challenge by attaching a congressional commission bill to smooth final passage. Should they proceed with such a commission, it’s important that they give it real teeth so it stands a chance to succeed.

ATTACHMENT FORTY – FROM USA TODAY

CAN CONGRESS REACH A DEAL TO AVERT A GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN? LAWMAKERS ARE SET TO ANNOUNCE A TEMPORARY PLAN

By Marina Pitofsky

Lawmakers are preparing a temporary bill to keep the government’s doors open until March as the nation faces a partial shutdown this week.  

Funding for agriculture, energy and water, military construction and veterans affairs, transportation and housing programs will expire on Jan. 19. The rest of the government’s funding expires Feb. 2. 

The stopgap measure, which congressional leaders are expected to release Sunday, would extend funding until March 1 for the agencies potentially hit later this week. The deal would give lawmakers until March 8 to fund other agencies and services, according to multiple reports.

The anticipated agreement comes as House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has faced major pressure from House Republicans' right flank after he announced a spending deal alongside Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., last week. At the time, the officials called for a spending package in line with the debt ceiling deal struck between former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and President Joe Biden, around $1.66 trillion total. 

Johnson on Friday announced he wasn’t backing out of that deal, despite calls from ultraconservative lawmakers to make deeper spending cuts. The uproar came after a handful of conservative House Republicans voted last year to oust McCarthy from the speakership as he worked with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown.  

Some of those right-wing lawmakers last week mulled introducing a motion to vacate, which would tee up a vote to oust Johnson, though others indicated the lawmakers weren't willing to take that step yet. 

And the ultraconservative lawmakers could try to tank a vote on the temporary measure, known as a continuing resolution, expected to be announced Sunday. The House and Senate must pass that deal before Friday at midnight to avoid a government shutdown.

A government shutdown means all officials and federal agencies that aren't deemed “essential” have to stop their work and close their doors. If the government does shut down, thousands of federal employees would be furloughed. 

"Essential" federal workers, which range from air traffic controllers to emergency personnel in national parks, would work without pay, but they would receive back pay once a shutdown ends. Some subcontractors for the government could be out of work and would not receive back pay.

A shutdown can also have significant impacts on Americans who don't work for the federal government. For example, some food assistance benefits could be delayed, and certain food safety inspections could be put on pause. @Food riots?

ATTACHMENT FORTY ONE – FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

FACT-CHECKING CANDIDATES’ SPARRING OVER SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE

The top presidential candidates are vowing to protect the entitlement programs for current seniors, though some have floated changes for younger generations. But they’ve muddied each other’s current positions.

By Angelo Fichera Jan. 6, 2024

Top contenders for the 2024 presidential election in recent weeks have accused each other of jeopardizing Social Security and Medicare, key entitlement programs for seniors.

The future of the programs has been fodder for endless political debate — and distortions — because of the long-term financial challenges they face.

Social Security’s main trust fund is currently projected to be depleted in 2033, meaning the program would then be able to pay only about three-quarters of total scheduled benefits. Medicare, for its part, is at risk of not having enough money to fully pay hospitals by 2031.

President Biden, former President Donald J. Trump, Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida are among the candidates zeroing in on those vulnerabilities, often by referring to one another’s previous positions.

Here’s a fact-check.

WHAT WAS SAID

“Trump in 2020: We will be cutting Social Security and Medicare”
— Biden campaign in a December social media post that includes a clip of Mr. Trump

This is misleading. The Biden campaign has repeatedly claimed that cutting the programs is one of Mr. Trump’s policies. But while Mr. Trump has in the past suggested he might entertain trims to entitlements, he has repeatedly vowed during his campaign to protect the programs.

In this case, the Biden campaign d a short clip of Mr. Trump during a Fox News town hall in March 2020 and ignored his clarification at the time.

The clip shows a Fox News host, Martha MacCallum, telling Mr. Trump, “If you don’t cut something in entitlements, you’ll never really deal with the debt.”

“Oh, we’ll be cutting, but we’re also going to have growth like you’ve never had before,” Mr. Trump responded.

The Trump administration immediately walked back his comments and said he was referring to cutting deficits. “I will protect your Social Security and Medicare, just as I have for the past 3 years,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post a day later.

During his time in office, Mr. Trump did propose some cuts to Medicare — though experts said the cost reductions would not have significantly affected benefits — and to Social Security’s programs for people with disabilities. They were not enacted by Congress.

Like other candidates, including Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump has shifted his positions over time. In a 2000 book, Mr. Trump suggested, for people under 40, raising the age for receiving full Social Security retirement benefits to 70. Before that, he said he was open to the idea of privatizing the program, even if he did not like the concept. He no longer advances those positions.

Mr. Trump suggested last month that the government could avert any Social Security changes by expanding drilling in the United States, but experts say that is not feasible.

“Dedicating current oil and gas leasing revenues to Social Security would cover less than 4 percent of its shortfall, and it would be impossible to fix Social Security even if all federal land were opened to drilling operations,” according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

WHAT WAS SAID

“And unlike Ron DeSanctimonious, we will always protect Social Security and Medicare for our great seniors. He wanted to knock the hell out of Social Security and Medicare.”
— Mr. Trump during a campaign rally in mid-December

This is misleading. While in Congress, Mr. DeSantis supported budget frameworks that proposed raising the full Social Security retirement age to 70, but leaving the early retirement age the same. As a presidential candidate, he has said he would not cut Social Security for seniors but has at times expressed openness to changes for younger people without specifying what those are.

Currently, workers are eligible for their full benefits at their full retirement age, which varies from 66 to 67 depending on year of birth. But recipients can qualify for reduced benefits as early as age 62.

As a Florida congressman, Mr. DeSantis did vote for Republican budget proposals — which would not have changed the law on their own — that supported gradually raising the full retirement age for Social Security to 70. The proposals did not call for changing the early retirement age.

The proposals also called for changes to Medicare, including by eventually increasing its retirement age to 67 or 70, from 65, and transitioning the program to “premium support,” in which the government would provide payments for seniors to shop for various health care plans.

Mr. DeSantis has not made clear his plans for Medicare as he runs for president, but he has often rejected the idea of changing Social Security. “We’re not going to mess with Social Security as Republicans, I think that that’s pretty clear,” he said in March.

That said, he has signaled openness to adjusting the program for younger people. In a July interview on Fox News, Mr. DeSantis said, “Talking about making changes for people in their 30s or 40s, so that the program’s viable, you know, that’s a much different thing, and that’s something that I think there’s going to need to be discussions on.”

The DeSantis campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

WHAT WAS SAID

“Nikki Haley, she has claimed that the retirement age is way, way, way too low. That’s what she said. So you’ve got a lot of people that have worked hard their whole life. Life expectancy is declining in this country. It’s tragic, but it’s true. So to look at those demographic trends and say that you would jack it up so that people are not going to be able to have benefits. I mean, I don’t know why she’s saying that.”
— Mr. DeSantis on CNN last month

This needs context. Life expectancy in the United States dropped during the coronavirus pandemic, but it is inching back up. And Ms. Haley has only called for changes to Social Security for younger people — not unlike what Mr. DeSantis himself has entertained.

“The way we deal with it is, we don’t touch anyone’s retirement or anyone who’s been promised in, but we go to people, like my kids in their 20s, when they’re coming into the system, and we say, ‘The rules have changed,’” Ms. Haley said in an August interview with Bloomberg. “We change retirement age to reflect life expectancy.”

Ms. Haley did not specify what the new retirement age should be. “What we do know is 65 is way too low, and we need to increase that,” she said when pressed. “We need to do it according to life expectancy.”

On Medicare, Ms. Haley has proposed expanding Medicare Advantage, under which private companies provide plans and are paid by the government to cover the beneficiary.

Yet for 2023, the government was projected to spend $27 billion more for Medicare Advantage plans than if those enrollees were in traditional Medicare. Experts note that expanding Medicare Advantage while achieving overall savings would require structural changes that would be politically challenging to implement.

“It would require a change in payment policy that would likely run into fierce opposition,” said Tricia Neuman, senior vice president at the health nonprofit KFF and executive director for its program on Medicare policy.

Curious about the accuracy of a claim?

ATTACHMENT FORTY TWO – FROM AXIOS

CONGRESS STRIKES 10TH-HOUR DEAL ON 2024 SPENDING

By Juliegrace Brufke and Andrew Solender

House Republicans and Senate Democrats have come to an agreement on topline spending numbers for the rest of 2024, congressional leaders announced Sunday.

Why it matters: Congress still has to cut deals on the individual spending bills left to pass, but this is a key step to dodging a government shutdown later this month.

The details: In messaging guidance sent to House Republicans on Sunday, Johnson's office said topline government spending will be set at $1.59 trillion for fiscal year 2024 – the level set in last year's bipartisan debt ceiling deal.

• $886 billion of that is Pentagon funding set out in defense spending bill President Biden signed in December.

• That leaves $704 billion in non-defense spending, Johnson's office said, touting "the first cut in non-VA, non-defense appropriations in years."

The intrigue: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a joint statement that the non-discretionary spending figure is actually $772.7 billion, which would bring the total spending topline to $1.66 trillion.

• Schumer's office pointed to an additional $69 billion as part of a "side agreement" between former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Biden in the debt ceiling deal to account for the discrepancy.

• Johnson's messaging guidance said Sunday's deal includes $10 billion in "additional cuts" to the IRS. Schumer's office said that's part of $20 billion in cuts that were already agreed to, but which would happen "this year rather than over the course of two years."

• Both sides said the new deal also claws back $6.1 billion in unspent COVID aid funds.

What they're saying: "As promised, the Speaker negotiated from a position of strength with the Democrat-controlled Senate and White House to deliver the most favorable budget agreement Republicans have achieved in over a decade," Johnson's messaging guidance said.

• He said the deal also allows House Republicans to "continue fighting for conservative policy wins" by fighting to include policy riders to appropriations bills and to "reprioritize" spending in the budget.

The other side: "The bipartisan funding framework congressional leaders have reached moves us one step closer to preventing a needless government shutdown," Biden said in a statement.

• Biden said the deal "rejects deep cuts to programs hardworking American families count on" and called for Republicans to to pass additional funding for Israel, Ukraine, the Indo-Pacific and border security.

• Jeffries and Schumer said they made clear to Johnson that Democrats "will not support including poison pill policy changes" in the twelve individual appropriations bills.

Editor's note: This article has been updated with new details.

ATTACHMENT FORTY THREE – FROM THE HILL

CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS REACH DEAL TO AVERT GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

BY MYCHAEL SCHNELL - 01/13/24 6:11 PM ET

Congressional leaders have reached a deal to avert a government shutdown next week, landing on a two-step stopgap bill that will keep the lights on in Washington into March, according to three sources familiar with the proposal.

Under the deal, the new government funding deadlines will be March 1 and March 7. The agreement comes ahead of Friday’s shutdown deadline, and a second deadline on Feb. 2.

Text of the continuing resolution is expected to be posted online Sunday evening, according to a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). Republican leadership is scheduled to hold a conference call with members Sunday at 8 p.m., a GOP lawmaker told The Hill, which will likely include a discussion about the plan to avert a government shutdown.

The proposal —  which the House and Senate must approve by Friday night to avoid a partial shutdown — will give the House and Senate more time to complete work on the 12 appropriations bills. Congressional leaders announced a deal on top-line spending numbers last weekend, but appropriators need more time to hash out particulars in each funding bill.

The announcement of the two-step continuing resolution is sure to anger conservative House Republicans, who are traditionally opposed to stopgap legislation and have been averse to GOP leadership cutting deals with Democrats.

The two-step approach, however, is one that was largely favored by House conservatives during the shutdown showdown in November. The structure was seen as a way to avoid a massive, whole-of-government omnibus funding bill in December, which Republicans typically abhor.

As an added wrinkle, hard-liners have been demanding that border security be included in any government funding effort, pinning the politically prickly topic to the already convoluted shutdown showdown.

Those dynamics mean that the deal will likely require significant Democratic support to get over the finish line in the House.

The backing of another two-step continuing resolution, meanwhile, marks a reversal of sorts for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who vowed in November not to put another stopgap bill on the floor.

“The House Republican Conference is committed to never being in this situation again. I’m done with short-term [continuing resolutions],” he said during a press conference shortly before the House approved a two-step stopgap bill.

At a Wednesday press conference, however, with the shutdown clock ticking, he said he was “not ruling out anything.”

House Republicans this week had been floating different types of stopgap bills. One option was a long-term continuing resolution, which would have triggered a 1 percent across-the-board cut, a mechanism included in the debt limit deal then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) struck with President Biden last year.

Johnson asked a group of moderate Republicans if they could support a full-year continuing resolution during a meeting in his office Friday morning, and nearly all lawmakers said no, according to one attendee. He then hinted at a continuing resolution that would last through February or March to buy more time to complete work on all 12 spending bills, the source added.

News of the agreement comes less than a week after congressional leaders rolled out an agreement for top-line spending numbers, a significant step toward completing the appropriations process through regular order.

The deal sets top-line spending at $1.59 trillion, plus around $69 billion in additional budget tweaks — largely in line with the spending caps included in the debt limit deal McCarthy struck with Biden last year that outraged Republicans. Johnson has highlighted some tweaks to that agreement, including accelerating clawbacks of IRS mandatory funding and additional clawbacks of unspent pandemic funds. @Clawbacka?

Conservative House Republicans came out against the deal, urging Johnson to craft a different plan that included deeper spending cuts. On Friday, however, the Speaker said the agreement “remains” in place.

But even as Johnson stuck by the deal, House Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good (R-Va.) insisted that he believed Johnson was still “legitimately considering alternatives.”

ATTACHMENT FORTY FOUR – FROM ABC

NO SNOW DAY FOR THE SENATE AS CONGRESS LOOKS TO AVERT A GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

Time is not a luxury this Congress has as a shutdown looms.

By Allison Pecorin January 16, 2024, 2:57 PM

House cancels votes due to weather ahead of possible shutdown

The snowstorms pummeling much of the country -- including D.C. -- will keep the majority of the federal government at home Tuesday, but not the Senate, whose members are expected to brave the weather to cast the first in a series of votes that they hope will stave off a partial government shutdown at week's end.

Though travel delays may prevent many senators from participating in Tuesday night's vote, time is not a luxury this Congress has as the shutdown looms -- meaning many will have to lace up their snow boots.

The procedural vote the Senate will take Tuesday night will be on a stopgap funding bill that lawmakers hope will buy them more time to complete work on yearlong appropriations. It comes just three days before funding for four of the 12 bills that fund the government are slated to run out.

Details of the short-term plan were announced jointly by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday.

The short-term bill, if passed, will move the deadlines to fund the government by more than a month: the four funding bills that were set to expire this Friday would run out of funding on March 1; the remaining eight bills currently set to expire on Feb. 2 would run out on March 8.

This stopgap spending bill should have relatively little trouble clearing the Senate, where it's expected to receive bipartisan support. Still, things could potentially come down to the wire in the Senate where passage of bills can require multiple procedural votes and multiple days of work.

Passing the stopgap bill before funding partially runs out on Friday night will require the cooperation of all senators. The objection of any one senator to expediting passage of the bill could cause a final vote to potentially bleed into the weekend. That's why the Senate can't afford a snow day.

MORE: Congressional leaders reach short-term funding deal to keep government open: Sources

Johnson will need Democrats' help

In the House, the short-term extension should also sail to passage relatively easily once it's brought up for a vote. However, Johnson will be in the unenviable position of having to rely on the votes of Democrats to pass it, a move that leaves him vulnerable to his right flank.

Johnson's predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, was ousted from his role as speaker for relying on Democrats to pass a similar short-term extension of government funding. While there's been less of a groundswell of Republicans threatening to oust Johnson so far, he'll likely have some hell to pay with hard-right Republicans.

Unlike the Senate, the House leaders called off votes in the lower chamber Tuesday night because of the storms. The House will need to wait for the Senate to complete its work on the short-term bill before its members can consider it.

This is the third time Congress will seek to kick the can on funding this fiscal year. 9/23 to 9/24@

Congressional leaders hope this latest deadline extension will buy lawmakers the time they need to finally complete their work on and pass annual appropriations bills that will fund the government through the end of September.

The top-line spending deal reached by Schumer and Johnson last weekend was a major step forward toward finalizing those spending bills, but leaders are calling for this short-term funding bill to buy them a bit more time to finalize legislative text based on that deal.

That agreement holds constant spending levels previously agreed to by President Joe Biden and then-Speaker McCarthy during negotiations that raised the federal debt limit.

"The bipartisan topline funding agreement reached ensures that America will be able to address many of the major challenges our country faces at home and abroad," Schumer said in a statement. "It is clear that a Continuing Resolution is necessary to give the Appropriations Committee additional time to finish drafting their bills to reflect the new agreement."

MORE: A partial government shutdown could happen next week. Here's what you need to know

Johnson, while touting the $6 billion in COVID funds and expediting a $10 billion cut in funding to the IRS in the top-line spending deal, also said the stopgap spending bill that the Senate will work to advance Tuesday would be necessary.

"Because the completion deadlines are upon us, a short continuing resolution is required to complete what House Republicans are working hard to achieve: an end to governance by omnibus, meaningful policy wins, and better stewardship of American tax dollars," Johnson said in the statement.

Johnson has previously said he would not take up any additional short-term bills, and many in his right flank are angry about the underlying top-line deal Johnson struck, contending it does not do enough to secure steep cuts they wanted.

The House Freedom Caucus took only moments to make their objection to the stopgap funding bill known.

"This is what surrender looks like," the House Freedom Caucus posted on X moments after Schumer and Johnson announced their intent to hold votes to move the funding deadlines.

ATTACHMENT FORTY FIVE – FROM CNN

CONGRESS PASSES SHORT-TERM FUNDING EXTENSION, AVERTING GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN AHEAD OF FRIDAY DEADLINE

By Clare Foran, Kristin Wilson, Ted Barrett and Morgan Rimmer, CNN Updated 5:02 PM EST, Thu January 18, 2024

Congress passed a short-term funding extension Thursday, averting a partial government shutdown at the end of the week after lawmakers raced the clock ahead of a key Friday deadline.

The bill will now be sent to President Joe Biden to be signed into law. The Senate voted first to pass the measure by a tally of 77 to 18. The House passed the bill later in the day, 314 to 108.

But major challenges still lay ahead. Lawmakers must now attempt to pass a series of full-year spending bills before new March deadlines – a painstaking process with a wide array of potential landmines as the two parties fight for competing policy priorities.

In a rare event, lawmakers had been confronting not one but two government shutdown deadlines early this year – on January 19 and February 2.

The short-term funding extension sets up two new funding deadlines on March 1 and March 8. The stopgap measure will provide more time for full-year appropriations bills to be negotiated and passed.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who presides over an extremely narrow majority, has faced intense pushback from his right flank amid the government spending fight.

Johnson has been criticized by conservatives over a topline spending deal he struck with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, which would set spending at close to $1.66 trillion overall. Conservatives were also quick to criticize the proposal for a short-term funding extension after it was announced.

“This is what surrender looks like,” the far-right House Freedom Caucus posted on X.

Johnson has defended the topline agreement and said in a statement Sunday that the short-term spending bill “is required to complete what House Republicans are working hard to achieve: an end to governance by omnibus, meaningful policy wins, and better stewardship of American tax dollars.”

In addition to the effort to avert a shutdown, a group of Senate negotiators have been working to try to strike a deal on border security that could unlock passage of aid to Ukraine and Israel.

Top congressional leaders emerged from a Wednesday meeting with Biden at the White House hopeful that a deal on a national security supplemental aid package can be reached.

If a deal is reached in the Senate, however, its fate in the House will be uncertain. A number of House Republicans have warned that they don’t believe a Senate compromise on border security would be adequate to address the issues at the border and would be ready to reject such a measure.

CNN’s Haley Talbot contributed to this report.

ATTACHMENT FORTY SIX – FROM REUTERS

US CONGRESS PASSES BILL TO AVERT GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN, SENDS IT TO BIDEN

By Richard Cowan and Makini Brice January 18, 20245:03 PM ESTUpdated 29 min ago

WASHINGTON, Jan 18 (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday approved a stopgap bill to fund the federal government through early March and avert a partial government shutdown, sending it to President Joe Biden for final approval.

The measure passed 314-108, with 106 Republicans and two Democrats... Jake Auchincloss (Ma) and Mike Quigley (Il) in opposition.

Earlier on Thursday, the Senate had easily passed the bill, with a 77-18 vote ahead of the weekend deadline.

"We have good news for America. There will not be a shutdown on Friday," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, said on the Senate floor just before the vote in that chamber.

Both chambers accelerated their votes because of a forecast Friday snowstorm that could have snarled lawmakers' departure for the weekend.

The Democratic-majority Senate and Republican-controlled House are far behind in carrying out their basic duty of funding the government for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1, with lawmakers scrambling to keep the lights on to give them more time to pass a full-year bill.

Schumer and his House Republican counterpart, Mike Johnson, early this month agreed to a $1.59 trillion discretionary spending level for the year that ends on Sept. 30. But in a sign of how bitterly the Congress is divided, the two parties now disagree on that number, with Democrats saying the actual amount agreed to is $1.66 trillion.

The intense jockeying between House Republicans seeking deep spending cuts and Democrats comes amid a $34.4 trillion national debt that is rapidly escalating and has prompted worries in part because of the heavy interest payments now being borne by the Treasury Department.

This third stopgap funding bill, known as a "continuing resolution" or "CR," would simply extend last fiscal year's spending levels until two deadlines of March 1 and March 8 for completing action of spending for various government agencies.

Ahead of the votes, Democratic Representative Josh Gottheimer outlined the impact of possible government agency shutdowns, including a worsening backlog in veterans seeking disability benefits, a possible suspension of aircraft safety inspections and a freeze in Agriculture Department loans and other services to rural communities. Another example, farther ahead, is that more than 1 million military personnel temporarily would not receive paychecks.

Senator Susan Collins, the senior Republican on the Appropriations Committee, expressed frustration at how long it was taking to divide up the money for the 12 bills providing the full-year budget, saying, "This has been dragging on for a long time and I really don't know why."

In the House, Johnson could face blowback from hardline members of his party who oppose such stopgap funding bills without deep spending cuts.

That displeasure led last fall to the toppling of Johnson's predecessor, Kevin McCarthy.

ATTACHMENT FORTY SEVEN – FROM the NEW YORK POST

Senate passes government funding bill to avert shutdown until March

By Josh Christenson Published Jan. 18, 2024 Updated Jan. 18, 2024, 5:19 p.m. ET

Congress passed a stopgap government funding bill on Thursday, with the Senate and House both approving the legislation on a bipartisan basis to avert a looming weekend shutdown.

The House voted the further appropriations through by a count of 314-108, allowing funding at current levels to continue until March 1 for the Departments of Agriculture, Energy, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Veterans Affairs, the Food and Drug Administration and military construction.

The 13-page bill also approved funding until March 8 for the Pentagon and all other federal agencies.

More than 100 House Republicans and two House Democrats opposed the legislation, known as a continuing resolution, still allowing the “yes” votes to clear the lower chamber’s required two-thirds majority.

An impending snowstorm forecast to hit Washington, DC, on Friday added urgency to the approaching spending deadline, but that didn’t stop many members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus from voting “no.”

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a member of the caucus, blasted the bill’s negotiators on the House floor ahead of the vote for entertaining “side deals” on appropriations — and whined that lawmakers were more concerned about leaving town before the snowstorm than dealing with the nation’s $34 trillion debt.

The Freedom Caucus also denounced the “Johnson-Schumer CR” in a position statement prior to the vote for not upholding Republicans’ commitment to “secure the border.”

The Senate passed a stopgap government funding bill on Thursday afternoon, setting up an expected vote in the House later today to avert a looming weekend shutdown.

“We had 14 Democrats join all Republicans in voting yesterday to denounce and end Biden’s open border policies,” added Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), who chairs the caucus, referring to a resolution passed Wednesday in the House.

“Now, it’s time to require border security to fund this government. Shut down the border or shut down the government!” he threatened.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) huddled with Good, Roy and other caucus members on the floor ahead of the vote, apparently demonstrating his willingness to hear from each of his conference’s factions while governing a narrow 220-213 majority.

The Senate earlier voted 77-18 to pass the continued spending, with eighteen Republicans in opposition and five not voting, including Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), 90, who was recently hospitalized with an infection.

“We have good news for America. There will not be a shutdown on Friday,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a floor speech. “Because both sides have worked together, the government will stay open, services will not be disrupted, we will avoid a needless disaster.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash), who chairs the Appropriations Committee, said a shutdown “should not be an acceptable option to anyone,” noting the additional “opportunities cost” for agencies having to prepare for the eventuality.

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), who opposed the bill, introduced a last-minute motion to return it to the Appropriations Committee and instead prepare a full-year government funding measure until the end of the fiscal year, but it was voted down 82-13.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), another “no” vote, also failed to pass an amendment to the legislation banning US funding to the West Bank and Gaza by a vote of 44-50.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) supported the bill — but 18 other Republicans voted against it.

President Biden will have to sign the legislation before the government’s lights go dark on Friday at 11:59 p.m.

Johnson — who acknowledged on Wednesday the funding would not give his caucus “everything we want” — introduced a “laddered” approach to the spending plan before the winter holiday recess, which was adopted again to extend the funding deadline.

He has expressed a desire to return the lower chamber to regular order and pass 12 separate appropriations bills for federal agencies and operations — a feat that hasn’t been accomplished since 1996.

Its passage will allow Johnson to further negotiate a topline $1.66 trillion agreement with Schumer to fund the government for fiscal year 2024, with $888 billion in defense spending and $773 billion in discretionary spending.

At least $69 billion was included as part of a side deal that former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) negotiated with Biden in a 2023 bill to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, known as the Fiscal Responsibility Act.

Schumer called out hardline House Republicans last week for trying to “bully” their speaker and colleagues into a government shutdown.

President Joe Biden holds a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House, Nov. 13, 2023, in Washington.

President Biden will have to sign the legislation before the government’s lights go dark on Friday at midnight.

The government has been funded on continuing resolutions since Oct. 1, when McCarthy passed an earlier bill to avert a shutdown that eventually led to his ouster by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and seven other GOP lawmakers.

In November, Johnson passed two separate continuing resolutions to extend the funding deadline to Jan. 19 and Feb. 2. All the funding bills kept federal spending at fiscal year 2023 levels.

Senate Republicans and Democrats are further hashing out a separate $106 billion national security supplemental deal to send military aid to Ukraine and Israel and to reform US border laws.

Johnson met with Biden at the White House on Wednesday to express reservations about the proposed border deal, making him the lone voice of opposition in congressional leadership next to Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).

ATTACHMENT FORTY EIGHT – FROM CBS

BIDEN SIGNS SHORT-TERM GOVERNMENT FUNDING BILL, AVERTING A SHUTDOWN

Washington — President Biden signed a stopgap measure to fund the government through the beginning of March into law on Friday, the White House said, avoiding a partial shutdown as lawmakers continue working to pass a broader spending deal. 

The House and Senate approved the continuing resolution on Thursday in bipartisan votes, sending it to Mr. Biden's desk. Without the measure, a partial shutdown would have begun Saturday morning.

The legislation extends current-level funding for some federal agencies through March 1, and others through March 8. The government has been operating under a short-term funding extension passed in November, and this was the third stopgap measure Congress has passed since September. 

Congressional leaders announced an agreement on yearlong spending levels earlier this month. The continuing resolution was needed to give lawmakers more time to translate the deal into legislative text and shepherd it through both chambers. But a vocal contingent of conservative Republicans in the House oppose the $1.66 trillion agreement and have urged Speaker Mike Johnson to rescind his support.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, has said his next goal is reaching an agreement on separate national security legislation. Congressional leaders of both parties met with President Biden at the White House this week to discuss funding for Ukraine, Israel and increased border security. Schumer said it was a "very good meeting" and there was a "large amount of agreement" to fund Ukraine and implement immigration reform at the same time. 

"Once Congress avoids a shutdown, it is my goal for the Senate to move forward to the national security supplemental as soon as possible," Schumer tweeted Thursday. "Our national security, our friends abroad, and the future of democracy demands nothing less."

ATTACHMENT FORTY NINE – FROM INVESTOPEDIA

BIDEN SIGNS DEAL FUNDING GOVERNMENT THROUGH MARCH, AVERTING SHUTDOWN

By DICCON HYATT Published January 19, 2024

· President Joe Biden has signed a bill extending government funding through March, giving lawmakers more time to work out a budget.

· Democrats and Republicans in Congress have agreed on how much the federal government can spend, but must hammer out the details.

· The signing averts, at least for the time being, the possibility of a government shutdown.

President Joe Biden signed a bill Friday funding the government until March, delaying—at least for the time being—a potential government shutdown.1

Lawmakers have given themselves another few months to work out the details of next year’s budget, which was originally supposed to be approved in October. Democrats, who control the Senate, and Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, agreed earlier in January on how much the government can spend and now must work out the details of where the money will go. 

The continuing resolution passed by the House and the Senate this week extends funding through March 1 for four of the 12 appropriation bills that make up the federal budget, and through March 8 for the other eight.2

Some Republicans had threatened to block the spending bills if Democrats didn't agree to steep cuts to social programs, but the spending deal made a shutdown, and the damage to the economy it would cause, more remote.

Lawmakers have been negotiating compromise spending bills, including a measure that would let more lower-income families benefit from the Child Tax Credit. As with past spending bills, they include tax cuts favored by Republicans and social spending increases favored by Democrats, leaving the $34 trillion national debt on an upward trajectory.