Nikki Haley, former ambassador to the United Nations and 2024 Republican presidential candidate, speaks during a caucus night watch party in West Des Moines, Iowa, U.S., on Monday, Jan. 15, 2024. (Rachel Mummey/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — After former President Donald Trump dominated the Iowa caucuses, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said in a statement Tuesday that she will only debate Trump or President Joe Biden.
“We’ve had five great debates in this campaign,” Haley said in the statement. “Unfortunately, Donald Trump has ducked all of them. He has nowhere left to hide. The next debate I do will either be with Donald Trump or with Joe Biden. I look forward to it.”
Haley’s statement came after a disappointing defeat in Iowa’s caucuses where she came in third with about 19% of the vote — behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis with 21% and Trump with 51%.
Trump has not participated in any of the GOP debates so far.
(NEW YORK) — Prosecutors in Suffolk County, New York, have charged alleged serial killer Rex Heuermann with murdering Maureen Brainard-Barnes, who disappeared in 2007 while working as an escort, linking him to her death through DNA and other evidence.
Former President Donald Trump speaks at his caucus night event at the Iowa Events Center, Jan. 15, 2024 in Des Moines, Iowa. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump is on trial this week in New York City to determine whether he will have to pay former Elle magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll additional damages for defaming her in 2019 when he denied her allegations of sexual assault.
Last year, in a separate trial, a jury determined that Trump was liable for sexually assaulting Carroll in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in the 1990s, and that he defamed her in a 2022 social media post by calling her allegations “a Hoax and a lie” and saying “This woman is not my type!”
Trump has denied all wrongdoing and has said he doesn’t know who Carroll is.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Jan 16, 8:51 AM
On heels of Iowa victory, Trump is back on trial
When Donald Trump’s federal defamation trial gets underway in lower Manhattan this morning, it will be only about 11 hours since the former president claimed victory in the Iowa caucuses.
The trial is expected to take about a week, which could take Trump right to the doorstep of the New Hampshire Primary, scheduled for next Tuesday.
Trump has said that he plans to attend the trial at some point during the week, but has not indicted when.
The former president did not attend last year’s trial, held at the same courthouse, where a New York jury found him liable for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll and defaming her when he denied her accusation in a 2022 social media post.
(NEW YORK) — More than 200 million Americans are on alert Tuesday for heavy snow, ice and dangerously low wind chills as an arctic blast grips the nation.
Twenty-three U.S. states from Louisiana to Maine were under weather advisories for snow and ice alone early Tuesday, as a mix of rain and freezing rain stretched in a line from New Orleans to Maryland. This line is expected to change to mostly rain by 10 a.m. ET as it heads east and will be over Boston, Massachusetts, by 6 p.m. ET.
Strong thunderstorms are also possible Tuesday in Florida, from Jacksonville to Orlando, Tampa and Fort Myers, where there could be damaging winds and an isolated tornado.
Weather-related school closures are affecting more than a million students nationwide on Tuesday.
Snow was falling early Tuesday in the Northeast throughout much of Pennsylvania and New Jersey as well as from New York City to Boston. The snowfall is expected to continue in those areas all morning.
The weather system is forecast to keep pushing north and snowfall should end in New York City by 5 p.m. ET and in Boston by 8 p.m. ET. There could be a light glaze of ice with freezing rain or drizzle in those areas as temperatures warm back up near the freezing mark.
Up to 6 inches of snow is possible for Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland, while 1 to 4 inches could accumulate from New York City to Boston. Maine could end up with up to a foot of snow in some places.
Avalanche warnings were in effect Tuesday in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, including the ski resort towns of Aspen and Vail, as well as in much of Utah’s mountains, including around Salt Lake City.
Lake-effect snowfall could dump an additional 1 to 3 feet in Buffalo, New York, from Wednesday morning through Thursday night.
The snow drought has officially ended after 728 days in Washington, D.C., with 3.4 inches on Monday, after 716 days in Baltimore with 4.1 inches and after 715 days in Philadelphia with 1.5 inches.
New York City has yet to break its snow drought with only 0.4 inches counted on Monday. An area must get 1 inch of snowfall in a single day to break the drought.
Elsewhere, parts of Tennessee such as Nashville and Knoxville saw up to 9 inches of snow on Monday, while 3 to 5 inches accumulated in western Virginia and through Maryland.
Meanwhile, freezing rain is creating ice accumulation in areas in the South, including Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Birmingham, Alabama.
The wind chill — what temperature it feels like — were below zero Tuesday morning as far south as Dallas, Texas. Wind chill alerts alone amount to 170 million Americans and stretch the middle of the country from border to border. In the north, wind chills could get to -40 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday morning. In the southern tip of Texas, in Brownsville, wind chills could reach -10 degrees.
Record low temperatures are possible Tuesday morning in parts of Texas, including Dallas, Houston, Austin, Lubbock and Amarillo; as well as in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Denver, Colorado.
Temperatures are forecast to get a bit warmer later in the week but will still be brutally cold for many. On Friday morning, the wind chill is expected to be around -20 degrees in Kansas City and -15 in Chicago.
Another winter storm is expected to move into the Pacific Northwest later Tuesday and unleash rain from Seattle, Washington, to San Francisco, California, as well as snow to the Cascade mountain range.
The new system is forecast to bring more snow to the Rockies on Wednesday, to the Plains of the Dakotas, Nebraska and Missouri on Thursday and possibly even to Washington, D.C. by Friday.
A picture shows a view of a damaged building following a missile strike launched by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on the Kurdistan Region’s capital of Arbil, on Jan. 16, 2024. (Safin Hamid/AFP via Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Iranian missiles targeted two locations, one in Iraq claimed to be used by Israeli intelligence and one in the Syrian city of Idlib, a base for ISIS militants, Iranian military officials said Tuesday.
Four missiles were “successfully fired” toward the Takfiri group, who are affiliated with ISIS, in Idlib, said Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a commander in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
“Also, four missiles were fired from Kermanshah, and seven from West Azerbaijan Province towards the Zionist headquarters in the Kurdistan region of Iraq,” he added.
Explosions had been reported in at least two areas in Iraq, including several that were reported near the U.S. Consulate in Erbil, Iraq, an Iraqi security source told ABC News.
Iran didn’t name the U.S. as a target of the missiles it said it fired and U.S. officials said no American “personnel or facilities” had been targeted.
U.S. officials condemned the strikes, with Adrienne Watson, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, saying that the “initial indications are that this was a reckless and imprecise set of strikes.”
“The United States supports the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of Iraq,” Watson said in a statement.
Four people were killed on Tuesday, Iraqi officials said. Iranian-backed militias in Iraq have launched near-daily drone attacks on bases housing U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria.
Tuesday’s strikes were a response to the terrorist attack on crowds of people in Kerman, Iran, on the anniversary of the death of Gen. Qasem Soleimani, Iran said. That attack killed dozens, according to Iranian officials. ISIS took responsibility.
“The rocket attacks on the Mossad headquarters and terrorists were part of our response to those who acted against national security,” said spokesman of the Islamic Republic Foreign Ministry Nasser Kanaani.
Israel has not commented on Tuesday’s strikes.
Kanaani added, “While the enemy, with a miscalculation, committed a crime against the government and nation of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the system with its high intelligence, identified the criminals’ headquarters in a precise and targeted operation. Using precise and accurate projectiles, the Islamic Republic has targeted them.”
The Iraqi government recalled recalled its ambassador in Tehran “for consultations” in response to the strikes, officials said in a statement on social media.
Tuesday’s strikes were the first IRGC missile operation to target two different regions at the same time, local Iranian media reported.
The most recent strike by Iran within Iraq appeared to have been in 2020, when the country fired at least 16 missiles into the neighboring country.
Fars News, a state news agency, reported at the time that the missiles had been surface-to-surface and added that the location of launch was the western city of Kermanshah.
(DES MOINES, Iowa) — Donald Trump dominated the Iowa caucuses on Monday, taking his first important step to his third straight GOP presidential nomination and delivering a blow to his rivals, who had hoped to capitalize on his legal troubles and earlier signs the base might be ready to move on from him.
Not so: Trump is projected by ABC News to have defeated Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley by about 30 points. DeSantis is projected to come in second, with about 21% of the vote; and Haley to come in third, taking about 19%.
New Hampshire will hold the next nominating contest with a Jan. 23 primary, and it could offer a more mixed bag for Trump given that independents and undeclared voters can participate there.
But Iowa’s results — and the widespread evidence that key conservative voting blocs continue to embrace Trump, as seen in entrance polling — marked an unquestionable win for the former president as the 2024 got underway.
Here are six takeaways from the caucus results:
The base is Trump’s
Unlike Democrats’ caucuses in Iowa in 2020, which was ultimately out of step with what the party voters nationwide wanted, this year’s Republican caucuses seem to have included relatively good representation of the larger GOP base around the country.
The state is overwhelmingly white and rural, and the percentage of residents with a college education is below the national average. It’s states like Iowa that represent the base of the modern Republican Party, built on very conservative, older and evangelical voters — and Trump cleaned up.
His overwhelming victory among voters who make up the heart of the GOP — and the primary electorate — underscores the daunting task facing Haley and DeSantis, as well as his other critics not running for office, who have now spent months on the trail and tens of millions of dollars trying to tamp down the former president’s influence over the party.
What’s more, the extent to which Republican voters in Iowa have signed on to Trump’s personal issues and embraced him even more than in past cycles was made clear in the entrance poll of caucusgoers.
According to an analysis of the entrance poll, 65% of GOP voters said they don’t think President Joe Biden legitimately won the presidency in 2020, echoing Trump’s baseless claims of fraud, and 63% percent said they’d consider Donald Trump fit for office even if he were convicted of a crime. Nearly half said they’re part of the “MAGA movement” that Trump started.
Ideologically, 88% of caucusgoers said they are conservative, matching the high in Iowa GOP entrance polls, including 51% who identified as “very” conservative. Trump ended up winning 54% of conservative voters, about 30 points better than in 2016. And he won “very” conservative voters with 60% — about 40 points better than his 2016 showing in that group.
DeSantis hangs onto second place
DeSantis is set to nab second place, claiming some success in a state where he had essentially staked his entire campaign — and seen his poll numbers weaken somewhat in recent days.
Anything less than being No. 2 would likely have marked an embarrassment for a candidate who, along with a deep-pocketed political group, dumped enormous amounts of money into Iowa while building up an operation to persuade and motivate as many voters as possible. Speculation had even mounted over whether DeSantis might drop out if he placed third.
Instead, on Monday, his campaign said they were ready to keep competing.
“This is going to be a long battle ahead, but that is what this campaign is built for. The stakes are too high for this nation, and we will not back down,” one senior DeSantis official said.
Nonetheless, the night wasn’t all good news for DeSantis.
Trump still looks like he’ll end up winning by a huge amount — demolishing the past record for a margin of victory in an Iowa GOP caucus of 12 points.
The results also mark a disappointment for Haley and her surrogates after the South Carolina Republican saw a consistent bump in polling since September, including recent Iowa polls showing her narrowly running ahead of DeSantis.
The narrow divide in Monday’s caucus results between her and DeSantis means that no candidate can claim the clear mantle of Trump alternative.
A campaign spokesperson had said last week that “there’s only going to be two tickets out of Iowa,” while New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a top Haley surrogate, predicted earlier this month that she would “shock everyone in Iowa with a strong second” there.
Haley, like DeSantis vowed on Monday that she will “continue on.”
“We’re gonna make you proud, and we’re off to New Hampshire,” she told supporters.
Ramaswamy bows out
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy suspended his presidential campaign shortly after being projected to finish a distant fourth in the caucuses, failing to break 8%.
Ramaswamy had also invested heavily in Iowa and was a ubiquitous presence on the trail, visiting all 99 state counties twice.
Iowans historically receive outsized media attention because they are first to vote in each presidential nominating contest. But Ramaswamy’s poor showing led some observers to question the value of in-person campaigning to Iowa’s voters — and the value of so closely covering the comings-and-goings in the state. (Trump, on the other hand, campaigned relatively little.)
The entrance poll also showed 80% of caucusgoers had already made up their mind about voting earlier this month or before that — calling into question the value of the extensive campaigning the candidates did.
Ramaswamy had experienced a polling bump around the first primary debate last summer and then largely plateaued before breaking through, leaning heavily on a hard-line message of support for Trump, culture war issues and conspiracy theories, including falsely suggesting that the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill was an “inside job.”
Ramaswamy’s national profile did rise — and he suggested Monday that he isn’t planning on leaving the spotlight.
“Apoorva and I, we’re not going anywhere,” he told a crowd in Iowa, standing alongside his wife. “We’re just getting warmed up.”
Voters care less about electability against Biden
Both DeSantis and Haley have been making the argument that Trump can’t beat Biden — despite polling suggesting otherwise. But it doesn’t seem like that’s the argument voters were looking for in Iowa.
About 14% caucusgoers said the most important factor in deciding their vote was finding the person who “can defeat Joe Biden,” and 12% of voters prioritized voting for the candidate with the “right temperament,” per the entrance poll analysis.
Roughly 75% of caucusgoers prioritized a candidate who “shares my values” or “fights for people like me.”
Haley, who touted her more expansive polling advantage over Biden than Trump’s, was able to win the majority of caucusgoers who wanted the right temperament but basically tied the former president with voters who prioritized electability.
Trump won 43% of voters who were looking for shared values — a huge jump from just 5% with the group in 2016 — and won 82% of voters who were looking for a candidate who “fights for people like me.”
Trump, Biden already focusing on the general election
Given Trump’s increasing odds of winning the GOP nomination — and his overwhelming win Monday — both he and Biden are already focusing on the general election in the fall.
Speaking on Monday night in Iowa, Trump zeroed in on how he feels the White House’s policies have hurt Americans and the world, including calling out energy, immigration and foreign policy.
“I don’t want to be overly rough on the president. But I have to say that he is the worst president that we’ve had in the history of our country. He’s destroying our country,” Trump said.
Democrats, for their part, seized on Trump’s Monday win to rev up their own base.
“Donald Trump is the official 2024 Republican presidential frontrunner, and we need to do everything we can to defeat him. We cannot run the risk of Trump — or any MAGA extremist — being at the helm of our democracy again,” Biden’s campaign wrote in a fundraising text.
Turnout sinks amid terrible weather
Turnout was flat out lousy in Iowa Monday, which saw sub-zero temperatures.
The state Republican Party estimated that about 100,000 people voted in the caucuses — falling short of the record set in 2016, when 187,000 people voted in the GOP caucuses.
The 2016 record broke the party’s previous 2012 record of 121,000, which itself topped the 2008 record of 119,000.
There are more than 750,000 registered Republicans in Iowa, so Monday’s results represent the views of a fraction of one state’s branch of one political party.
Still, the state GOP touted the turnout.
“Early results indicate that we are on track to have around 100,000 Iowans participating in the 2024 First-in-the-Nation Iowa Caucus. Iowans braved record-low temperatures after a blizzard blanketed their state just days earlier to deliberate with members of their community about the future of our country and participate in true, grassroots democracy,” said state party chair Jeff Kaufmann.
(WASHINGTON) — Police in Washington, D.C. are looking for a suspect who lit another man on fire in broad daylight just a mile north of the United States Capitol, police say.
The incident occurred on Monday at approximately 3:05 p.m. when detectives from the Metropolitan Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Division say that the suspect “poured liquid on the victim at the intersection of North Capitol Street and P Street Northwest.”
“The suspect then ignited the liquid,” authorities said. “The suspect then ran off.”
Police have not released a potential motive in the attack or said if the two individuals knew each other but the victim was subsequently transported to a local hospital for treatment of serious injuries, according to police.
The identities of the two individuals involved has also not yet been made public by authorities in Washington, D.C.
“The Metropolitan Police Department currently offers a reward of up to $10,000 to anyone who provides information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for a violent crime committed in the District of Columbia,” police said in a statement following the incident.
Anyone who can identify this suspect or has any information about this incident should take no action but call police at (202) 727-9099 or text your tip to the Department’s TEXT TIP LINE at 50411.
(NEW YORK) — A man who was fatally shot aboard a Brooklyn subway may have been attempting to be a peacemaker during a fight between two other men, the New York City Police Department said.
Richard Henderson was shot on Sunday in the train car somewhere west of the Rockaway Avenue station, six stops away from where he was found by police who were responding to the incident. Henderson later died at the hospital, police said.
No arrests have been made and a suspect is still at large, police said.
Henderson appears to have been the peacemaker in a dispute between two other men over loud music when he was shot, police said.
Henderson may not have even been the intended target and the gunman may have instead been firing in the direction of the man he was arguing with, striking Henderson instead, police said.
(LONDON) — Two passenger planes have collided in Hokkaido, Japan, according to Japanese media reports.
The incident took place at New Chitose Airport in Hokkaido, some 110 miles east of the city of Sapporo in the northern part of the country, at approximately 5:30 p.m. local time, according to NHK in Japan.
According to airport officials, there was “contact” between a Korean Air plane and a Cathay Pacific plane but it is currently unclear how severe the collision between the airliners was.
The Korean Air plane had had 276 passenger and 13 crew on board when, according to the fire department, it clipped the Cathay Pacific aircraft which was parked at the gate at the time of the accident and had no passengers on board.
Both planes were on the ground at the time of the accident.
Weather reports indicate that visibility is currently poor in the northern part of Japan with heavy snow being reported in some areas and temperatures below freezing at just 24 degrees at New Chitose Airport when the accident happened.
Many flights here have been cancelled at the airport in Hokkaido and disruption is expected to continue for some time, officials said.
This accident comes just over two weeks after that Japanese Airline jet collided and burst into flames after colliding with another plane on the runway at a Tokyo’s Haneda Airport.
(NEW YORK) — Rankin County, Mississippi, residents and activists have called for the removal of the county sheriff after the sentencing of his deputies, who were involved in the torture and sexual abuse of two Black residents, was delayed for a second time.
“If our leadership is not in order, the system cannot be in order,” said Tasha Parker co-chair of the Local Organizing Committee, a local activist organization.
The Rankin NAACP chapter along with the Local Organizing Committee and Rankin residents held a press conference Jan. 15 after a second delay in the sentencing of six former law enforcement officers who were convicted of assault in August 2023.
Sentencing for Brett McAlpin, Christian Dedmon, Jeffrey Middleton, Hunter Elward, Daniel Opdyke, and Joshua Hartfield was meant to begin on Jan. 16 but was postponed until March 19. This marks the second time the sentencing has been delayed by the judge.
The press conference began with a call for the removal of Sheriff Bryan Bailey and the sentencing of the six men who tortured Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker, as well as those involved in the 2021 death of Damien Cameron, who was another Black man killed by Rankin County Sheriff’s deputies. Elward, one of the officers charged in the Jenkins and Parker assaults, was involved in Cameron’s death during a police killing in Rankin County in 2021.
“Today we have with us organizations all over the state of Mississippi and all over this country that are standing in solidarity with the Michael Jenkins family, that stand in solidarity with the Eddie Parker family,” said Kareem Mohamed, chair of the Local Organizing Committee. “And all those victims in Mississippi that has been victimized by the Goon Squad over the years.”
On Jan. 24, 2023 five Rankin County deputies and one Richland Police Department officer entered the residence where Jenkins and Parker were staying without a warrant. They entered the residence of Eddie Parker and Michael Jenkins, which resulted in the two men being beaten, sexually assaulted with a sex toy and shocked with Tasers for roughly 90 minutes while handcuffed, according to court documents obtained by ABC News.
For residents in Rankin County, this behavior is far too common from those who are entrusted to “protect and serve.”
“I also have a nephew who just come to me on Christmas Day, told me the exact same thing,” Prisicilla Sterling, cousin of Emmett Till, said. “A gun was placed in his [her cousin’s] mouth, his lips were busted and he had a ring, a black ring from a gun being pushed into his socket.”
The community expressed feelings of disappointment and frustration by the continued delay of the sentencings and plan on protesting economically if the sentences are deemed too light.
“If this continues on, we will begin to shut these doors down,” Mohammed said, “We will not spend our money where people do not care.”
On Aug. 3, 2023 the six men in question pleaded guilty to a total of 16 federal charges. These charges included conspiracy against rights, deprivation of rights under color of law, discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and obstruction of justice.
“Six defendants, five former members of the Rankin County, Mississippi, Sheriff’s Office (RCSO) – chief investigator Brett McAlpin, 52, narcotics investigator Christian Dedmon, 28, Lt. Jeffrey Middleton, 46, deputy Hunter Elward, 31, deputy Daniel Opdyke, 27 – and one former member of the Richland, Mississippi, Police Department – narcotics investigator Joshua Hartfield, 31 – pleaded guilty to all charges against them.,” the United Department of Justice said in a statement.
