Month: February 2020

President Trump will deliver his State of the Union address on Tuesday, February 4, at 9 pm ET in the Capitol. The speech comes just one day after the Iowa caucuses and in the midst of the president’s impeachment trial, promising to make it an especially fraught event.

Trump will likely use this occasion to focus on his reelection campaign, emphasizing his achievements — like low unemployment rates and a pair of new trade deals — rather than his grievances. Senior officials in his administration say he plans to avoid the topic of his impeachment trial, which is expected to …

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will deliver the Democratic response to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night.

The State of the Union response is notoriously a mixed blessing for the speaker. No one who follows politics will soon forget Marco Rubio’s lunge for his water bottle; Bobby Jindal went from presumed future presidential frontrunner to watercooler joke overnight. But the politician selected to give it still serves an important totemic role for their party.

As the woman who won the governorship of a Midwestern battleground state with her “fix the damn roads” slogan, Whitmer …

In Iowa, everyone is a winner.

At least, that’s what it seemed like Monday evening as the Democratic candidates leading in pre-caucus Iowa polls — Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, former Vice President Joe Biden, and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg — as well as Sen. Amy Klobuchar, each gave their own version of a glowing victory speech. They did so without having any official numbers to back their optimism.

There’s been a long delay in the release of the Iowa caucus results due to technical difficulties, and the Iowa Democratic Party has announced …

The Iowa caucuses, the first contest of the 2020 Democratic primary, have been going for hours, and at this point it’s clear that results are badly delayed. As of 11:40 pm, not a single precinct’s votes have been publicly reported by the state party; at this point in 2016, 90 percent of precincts had reported their totals.

In a statement at 11:30 pm Monday, the Iowa Democratic Party said the delay was due to “inconsistencies” between multiple sets of results, saying they were trying to “validate that all results match and ensure that we have confidence and accuracy in the …

A few times on Monday night, at some of the Iowa caucuses, candidates ended up with the same number of votes. There was a tie when it came time to hand out delegates.

So the Iowa voters resolved it with a time-honored election tradition: the coin toss.

As the Des Moines Register explained in 2016, there are a few circumstances when a coin toss becomes necessary, but it usually means the caucus has gotten to the point where it’s ready to award delegates but two or more candidates have the same number of supporters. The winner of the …

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), who once called for impeaching former President Barack Obama over his decision to make recess appointments, is now claiming that it’s Democrats who’ve actually “lowered the bar” for impeachment.

On Saturday, Ernst said that former Vice President and 2020 contender Joe Biden “should be very careful” with his words around President Donald Trump’s impeachment. “We can have a situation where if it should ever be President Biden, that immediately, people, the day after he would be elected would be saying, ‘Well, we’re going to impeach him,’” she said.

According to Ernst, Republicans could impeach Biden for …

On Monday, February 3, voters in Paris will be able to participate in the Iowa caucuses, too.

And they won’t be the only ones caucusing outside the state. For the first time, Iowans in three satellite locations around the world, including Paris; Tbilisi, Georgia; and Glasgow, Scotland, will have the chance to hold their own caucuses. In 12 states across the country as well as Washington, DC, voters will be caucusing remotely as well.

Senate Republicans are preparing to acquit President Donald Trump — and convict the American political system.

Trump was never really on trial in the Senate. Not in the sense of a true trial, where the objective is to understand the truth. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made that clear from the outset. “Everything I do during this I’m coordinating with White House counsel,” he said. “There’ll be no difference between the president’s position and our position as to how to handle this.”

Rather, it was America’s political system that faced the true trial. And the truth was revealed.

Let’s …

Since the beginning of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain America and Iron Man have been a constant. But we now have an idea of what the world will be like without them, as the first mini trailers for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, WandaVision, and Loki, three upcoming Marvel TV series that will air exclusively on Disney+, was released during the Super Bowl.

The three shows were spliced into a (very short) Super Bowl trailer. Falcon is seen launching Cap’s signature shield. Wanda, a.k.a. Scarlet Witch, and Vision find themselves in an I Love Lucy…

Considering the NFL’s contentious relationship with stars like Rihanna and Cardi B — both Rihanna and Cardi, along with other musicians, have said they won’t perform for the league because of its treatment of Colin Kaepernick — it’s something of a marvel that the 2020 Super Bowl halftime show boasted kinetic talent in the form of superstars Jennifer Lopez and Shakira (especially compared to Maroon 5, who headlined the halftime show in 2019). The call to book the duo was facilitated by Jay-Z, through his still relatively new partnership with the NFL; the women made history …