Weekly Recap: January 13th-19th
Weekly Recap: January 13th-19th
A recap of the big political stories affecting the United States this past week.
This week saw the beginning of the 2024 primaries with the Iowa Republican Caucus. Extreme cold combined with a lack of enthusiasm from Iowa Republican voters saw just 14% of registered Republicans show up to cast their vote. 51% of those votes went to Donald Trump and the other 49% went to the other candidates. DeSantis slightly edged out Haley for the second place finish. Both Ramaswamy and Hutchinson ended their campaigns after receiving only 4% and 1% of the vote. Ramaswamy quickly endorsed Donald Trump. Chris Christie had dropped out of the race prior to the caucus.
Despite coming in third place, Nikki Haley said this made it a clear two person race referring to herself and Donald Trump and said she will not debate DeSantis moving forward. She will only debate Trump who has so far avoided all of the debates. Nikki Haley is currently polling in second place in New Hampshire which has its primary on Tuesday.
Getting just 7% of the registered Republican vote when being both the leader of the Republican party and a former President isn’t a great indicator for Trump’s general election chances. Recent polls are showing Biden edging out Trump as well, however polls will continue to see changing results as we get closer to election day.
Politics being what it is, Trump’s team and close Congressional allies quickly touted Iowa as a historic win for Trump and claimed it was time for all other candidates to drop out of the race and endorse Trump so that Republicans could focus on defeating Biden.
In other Trump news, Trump attended his trial for defamation against E. Jean Carroll. This is in response to Trump continuing to disparage Carroll and claim he never assaulted or raped her even after he lost the previous civil trial where a jury found that Trump did assault and rape E. Jean Carroll. This current defamation case is ongoing so we will not know the results for some time.
Trump was reprimanded numerous times during this trial and threatened with being ejected from the courtroom. This is due to him muttering through the case so loudly that jurors and witnesses on the stand could hear what he was saying. Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba also was reprimanded numerous times for failing to follow proper procedures, such as not properly admitting items into evidence, and not understanding basic lawyer procedure such as objecting and questioning. Due to Ms. Habba’s attempts to change the focus of the trial, the judge has repeated to the jury more than once that Trump has been found guilty of raping Ms. Carroll and that isn’t up for debate in this defamation hearing.
Congress has once again passed a Continuing Resolution to keep the government funded temporarily, this time until March. As with previous continuing resolutions, there were more Democrat votes than Republican votes in the House of Representatives despite the Republican majority. This is largely due to MAGA Republicans who want to force a shutdown. They have attempted to force a shutdown with the debt ceiling, the budget multiple times, and over migrant crossings at the border. This highlights that a shutdown is their goal as opposed to a shutdown being a last resort when all other bipartisan efforts fail.
To recap the budget process, typically a President will submit their spending plan to Congress in February. Congress is intended to work together to outline their plan by April, and then a final budget resolution needs to be passed before October 1st which is when the new fiscal year begins. Continuing Resolutions are used as temporary funding measures to keep the government from shutting down when the October deadline is reached without a signed budget.
With the latest continuing resolution, if Congress does manage to pass a budget by March, they will need to get to work on the 2025 budget immediately afterwards to have any hope of hitting their April timeframe.
Democrat Representative Dan Goldman introduced a motion to censure Republican Representative Elise Stefanik for her recent statements and interviews where she lied about the facts surrounding the Jan 6th insurrection attempt and referred to the criminals who were sentenced after receiving due processes in a court of law as “hostages”. That statement is even worse considering there are currently actual US hostages in Gaza.
Mr. Goldman gave the following statement:
“January 6th was the gravest attack on American democracy since the Civil War and Congresswoman Stefanik’s persistent and continued support for the perpetrators of an insurrection is contemptuous.”
“In putting her personal ambitions over her integrity, Congresswoman Stefanik has been Donald Trump’s biggest congressional cheerleader, even though our mutual home state of New York overwhelmingly opposes him.”
Ms. Stefanik is one of Donald Trump’s most dedicated supporters and has recently been floated as a potential Vice President pick for Trump’s 2024 campaign.
Finally the annual March for Life was held today which also means that numerous Republican members of Congress made statements about their pro-life stances. Abortion has been an even more divisive issue since the overturning of Roe v Wade and has been directly cited as a major reason for numerous Republican election losses across the country as the vast majority of Americans support abortion in at least some cases and the majority support abortions up to at least 15 weeks. Several deep red states have passed near total or total abortion bans since Roe v Wade was overturned.
Abortion will be a key issue in the 2024 election season as Republicans continue to push for abortion bans and Democrats continue to push for abortion rights and codifying Roe v Wade into federal law.
