Iowa entrance polls show MAGA fans turned out for caucus: Live updates
Donald Trump holds commanding lead over challengers Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy
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Your support makes all the difference.The 2024 Republican candidates are eagerly awaiting the results of the Iowa caucuses on Monday – though if polling tells us anything, it’s that Donald Trump has a predictable commanding lead over the other candidates.
In a survey, conducted by The Des Moines Register, NBC News and Medicom, 48 per cent of potential voters said the former president was their first choice of Republican presidential candidates.
Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley was behind Mr Trump with 20 per cent support followed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis with 16 per cent.
Vivek Ramaswamy had just 8 per cent while only 5 per cent of potential voters said they were still unsure.
Of the survey respondents more than half said they had their minds made up regarding who they would cast their vote for.
But for the 32 per cent who could still be persuaded to support a candidate, the presidential candidates are fighting hard to convince them to join their teams.
Hunter Biden deposition: The ‘Big Guy’ conspiracy and addiction addressed as he testifies on Capitol Hill
Andrew Feinberg and Gustaf Kilander filed this report from Washington, DC:
Hunter Biden testified for more than six hours behind closed doors on Wednesday in the Republican impeachment probe into his father, President Joe Biden, saying in his opening statement that “I did not involve my father in my business” and that the House GOP has “built your entire partisan house of cards on lies”.
Speaking to the press on Wednesday afternoon, Hunter Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell said: “After seven hours of questions, the Republican majority ends the day where they started. They have produced no evidence that would do anything to support the notion that there was any financial transactions that involved Hunter with his father – period.”
“It seems to me that the Republican members wanted to spend more time speaking about my client’s addiction than they could ask any question that had anything to do with what they call their impeachment inquiry,” he added.
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Hunter Biden addresses ‘Big Guy’ conspiracy and addiction in Capitol Hill testimony
‘What he got in return for being a loving and supportive parent is a barrage of hate-filled conspiracy theories that hatched this sham impeachment inquiry,’ Hunter Biden says of father
How does Gen-Z feel about the 2024 election and the age of the candidates?
Ariana Baio asks the new generation of voters how they feel about two candidates being nearly 60 years older than they are?
How young Democrats and young Republicans really feel about 2024
With two candidates nearly 60 years older than them, Gen Z voters tell Ariana Baio how they’re choosing to cast their ballot this election
Trump in Texas: What to expect
Donald Trump considered having a tough border stance to be a signature issue for him during his time in the White House from 2017 to early 2021, will be on the offence when he visits Eagle Pass, Texas today. Those crossing the border near the city have posed a major problem for authorities in recent months.
The former president will accuse President Joe Biden of bungling border issues.
Karoline Leavitt, National Press Secretary for the Trump Campaign, called the border a “crime scene” in a statement and said the former president on the visit will outline a plan to “secure the border immediately upon taking office”.
But Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in a speech on Thursday morning sought to blame Mr Trump for the failure of the border deal. “When Donald Trump goes in front of the cameras to lament the mess at the border, he should look in the mirror,” Mr Schumer said, referring to the former president’s pressure on Republican lawmakers to not support bipartisan legislation aimed at helping solve problems at the border.
The former president supposedly wants to keep immigration and the border as an election issue with which he can hammer the Biden administration.
Mr Trump will be joined by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, whose administration has been building a military “base camp” at Eagle Pass to deter migrants.
Eagle Pass remains a flashpoint in a heated partisan debate over border security even though the number of migrants caught crossing illegally into both there — and at Brownsville where President Biden is visiting today — dropped sharply in January and February.
With reporting by Reuters
Trump tries to blame Biden’s ‘border invasion’ for Georgia student’s jogging murder
Kelly Rissman reports:
Former president Donald Trump has blamed Joe Biden’s “border invasion” as contributing to the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.
Riley, 22, was murdered after going for a run on the University of Georgia Intramural Fields earlier this month.
The murder suspect, Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, was accused of “disfiguring her skull” and of dragging and hiding her body in a “secluded area.”
Mr Ibarra is not a US citizen, transforming the charges against him into a rallying cry for the right — including Mr Trump.
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Trump tries to blame Biden for Georgia student’s jogging murder
Suspect Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, is a Venezuelan citizen who entered the US unlawfully in 2022
Biden in Texas: What to expect
A White House official said President Joe Biden would visit the border community of Brownsville, Texas “to meet with US Border Patrol agents, law enforcement officials and local leaders” and “discuss the urgent need” for Congress to enact the bipartisan border security and foreign aid funding bill negotiated by Senators Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz), James Lankford (R-Olka) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn), calling that compromise bill “the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border in decades”.
“He will reiterate his calls for congressional Republicans to stop playing politics and to provide the funding needed for additional US Border Patrol agents, more asylum officers, fentanyl detection technology and more,” the official added.
Mr Biden’s visit comes just over a year after a January 2023 visit that was his first trip to the border as president, and it represents a deliberate effort by the president to lay record crossings by migrants at the feet of Mr Trump, who personally intervened to prevent GOP senators from approving the compromise bill because doing so would prevent him from attacking the 46th president for allowing too many nonwhite asylum seekers into the country.
Republicans, particularly Mr Trump, have long used immigration as a cudgel to attack the Biden administration – even going so far as to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, homeland security secretary, by the smallest of margins in the House – 214-213.
Watch: Mitch McConnell addresses Senate after announcing he will step down
Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving Senate leader in history, has announced he will step down from the position in November. The 82-year-old confirmed his decision on Wednesday 28 February and addressed the chamber. “As I have been thinking about when I would deliver some news to the Senate, I always imagined a moment when I had total clarity and peace about the sunset of my work,” he said. “A moment when I am certain I have helped preserve the ideals I so strongly believe. It arrived today.” Despite relinquishing the position of Senate leader, Mr McConnell intends to see out his term in the upper house, which ends in January 2027.
Full story: Cornyn becomes first Republican to announce bid to replace McConnell
John Bowden reports from Washington, DC:
Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas threw his hat into the ring to replace departing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday, becoming the first member of his party to do so.
Mr Cornyn, a close ally of the minority leader, released a statement announcing his candidacy in which he pledged to end “backroom deals” and give members adequate time to read legislation before it is voted upon.
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John Cornyn becomes first Republican to announce bid to replace McConnell
Texas Republican is close ally to departing GOP leader
Republicans falling for ‘Russian propaganda’ in Biden probe, say Democrats
The Independent’s team on Capitol Hill spoke with lawmakers after Hunter Biden’s deposition:
Democratic members of the House Oversight & Accountability Committee accused Republicans of falling for Russian propaganda after Hunter Biden testified behind closed doors on Wednesday.
Their words came after President Joe Biden’s son Hunter testified behind closed doors on Wednesday and insisted that “I did not involve my father in my business” and that House Republicans “built your entire partisan house of cards on lies” when it came to opening an impeachment inquiry into the president.
Republicans have sought to tie the younger Biden to his father and say that Hunter involved his father in his business dealings. But Democrats said that the testimony from the testimony from the younger Biden showed how faulty the GOP investigation is.
“I think that the American people deserve better,” Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas told The Independent.
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Democrats slam Republicans for spreading ‘Russian propaganda’ over Bidens
‘The problem is that we’re six months behind on the work that we’re supposed to be doing, because they decided that they wanted to see what was in Hunter’s pants or they decided that they wanted to somehow propagate Russian propaganda’
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