Weekly Recap: January 20th-26th
A recap of the big political stories affecting the United States this past week.
This week brought us the New Hampshire primary, the second Republican primary and an illegitimate Democratic primary.
In Iowa, DeSantis had said this in response to candidates like Vivek Ramaswamy dropping out and immediately endorsing Trump:
“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 ended his campaign before the New Hampshire primary and immediately endorsed Trump. DeSantis kissed the ring.
This moment also proved Nikki Haley correct when despite coming in third place in Iowa she made a speech saying it was now a two person race between herself and Donald Trump. Trump went on to win the New Hampshire primary with 54% of the vote. 43% went to Haley.
Despite winning, this result showed Trump’s weakness in getting support for his campaign.
Independent voters are allowed to vote in party primaries in New Hampshire and 70% of Independent voters voted for Nikki Haley. Trump will not be able to win the general election without Independent voters despite his claim this week that he “doesn’t need them”.
Haley vowed to continue on with her campaign. The next state is South Carolina where Nikki Haley was formerly governor. Despite this, Haley is still trailing Donald Trump in South Carolina polls.
For Democrats the New Hampshire primary was purely for clout. The Democratic National Convention had changed the order of primaries starting this year to put South Carolina’s primary as the first state on February 3rd. New Hampshire didn’t like the change and insisted on holding their primary first which meant both that the New Hampshire primary does not award delegates and that Joe Biden wasn’t on the ballot.
Dean Phillips, a long shot Democratic challenger to Biden, sought to gain attention by winning the New Hampshire primary. In response, Biden’s campaign staff and supporters launched a write-in campaign to fight back. Despite write-in campaigns being notoriously hard to win, Biden had such a commanding lead that he was declared the winner of the New Hampshire primary early in the night as the write-in campaign captured such a commanding margin of votes.
Biden is on the ballot in South Carolina and it is a state where he has performed exceptionally well in the past. There is no path to the Democratic nominee for Phillips and South Carolina may be his last stop.
The conversation and debate around the Southern border heated up this week as the Supreme Court upheld a ruling that gives the federal government the ability to remove the razor wire that Texas has installed on some areas of the US-Mexico border.
In defiance of this order, Governor Abbott immediately ordered additional razor wire to be installed. Both Trump and Haley showed support for Abbott as did 25 state governors.
This action and support is not only in spite of the Supreme Court ruling, it also goes against the long standing legal precedent that the federal government has full authority over both the border and immigration, and federal law that gives Border Patrol access to any area within 25 miles of the border that is not a dwelling.
Long gone are the days of Republicans being the party of law and order.
As of now, Biden hasn’t taken additional action against Texas. This is likely a strategy of not countering Abbott’s aggression with more aggression which is what Abbott and Republicans want in order to create a narrative of government overreach, weaponized government, and state’s rights.
Instead, Biden has continued to work with the Senate which has been hashing out a true bipartisan border bill.
Some details of this bill have been released such as this bill would give the President new authority to shutdown the border if border crossings exceed 5,000 in a day. This would allow asylum requests between ports of entry to be blocked until border crossings decline back down below 5,000 for a set period of time. The full details of this bill are expected to be released early next week.
Despite the initial details showing that this bill would significantly reduce the current number of migrant crossings and add extra barriers in the way of asylum seekers, MAGA politicians in the House, including Speaker Johnson, have declared the bill dead on arrival.
Trump has been calling Johnson and other Republican members of Congress pressuring them to block all border and immigration bills until after the election in order to keep the border issues around as a main campaign focus.
The International Court of Justice weighed in on the case South Africa brought forward accusing Israel of committing genocide in its war against Hamas.
There has been large scale destruction and a large number of civilian casualties in Palestine from Israel’s attacks.
The court did not order Israel to stop its military offensive but did order Israel to take steps to limit harm to Palestinians, preserve evidence, and submit a report in one month on the steps it has taken.
The court also put nations who are aiding Israel on notice since the law makes those who assist a nation committing genocide as complicit. While not named directly, the United States is the main nation supporting Israel. The United Kingdom has also provided aid and support.
The court stated that Hamas must release their hostages.
The ruling and damages came down in Trump’s trial of defamation against E. Jean Carroll. Trump had already been found to have raped Ms. Carroll in a previous trial. Since that rape verdict, Trump has continued his online attacks to defame Ms. Carroll and to direct his base to attack her as well.
Throughout the defamation trial both Trump and his attorney Alina Habba were routinely reprimanded by the judge for not following procedure, attempting to retry the rape trial, and muttering during questioning that could be heard by witnesses and the jury.
The jury did not take long to deliberate and came back with the following damages:
$11 million for damage to her reputation
$7.3 million for emotional harm
$65 million in punitive damages
A total of $83.3 million
Trump will appeal the ruling.
