‘This is unstoppable’: America’s midwest braces itself for a Covid-19 surge

Experts predict an increase in deaths across the region, made significantly worse by lawmakers who question the value of face coverings

Three months ago, the Republican governor of Missouri chose not to wear a mask in a shop, because he said he wasn’t going to let the government tell him what to do. Mike Parson visited a hardware store to celebrate its reopening after he lifted Missouri’s coronavirus lockdown over the objections of health professionals and mayors of major cities.

Parson said the worst of the pandemic was past and the economic impact of the shutdown was worse than the virus. As for masks, the governor dismissively claimed “there was a lot of information on both sides” over whether to wear one so he wasn’t going to require people to do so.

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Can Republican Steve King keep his seat after becoming a ‘pariah inside the party’?

Abandoned by mainstream Republicans for his racist rhetoric, the Iowa congressman finds himself in a nightmare situation

This might actually be the year Iowa Republican congressman Steve King loses re-election.

King, the conservative congressman who’s been repeatedly reprimanded by leaders in his own party for racist rhetoric and interactions with white nationalists, finds himself in a nightmare situation for an incumbent congressman.

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Midwesterners were already doubting Trump. Covid could seal his political fate

The genius may think we are suckers, but in Iowa we don’t ruin good corn liquor with Clorox

Drake Custer is a union man who, along with about 30 of his buddies, had an Old English “K” tattooed on their chests about 15 years ago. It stands for “Keokuk”, a deflated Mississippi River manufacturing town of 10,000 tucked into the south-east corner of Iowa that Washington and Des Moines forgot.

“We know who we are,” said Custer.

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Iowa Democratic party chair resigns after caucus chaos

Troy Price says he is ‘deeply sorry for what happened’ at derailed event, as results remain unclear

The chair of the Iowa Democratic party, who oversaw a chaotic caucus last week that still has not yielded final results, resigned from his position on Wednesday.

Troy Price, who has been the head of the state’s Democratic party since 2017, apologized for what had happened on caucus night.

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Iowa caucus remains too close to call with 100% of precincts reporting

DNC chair Tom Perez calls for ‘immediate recanvass’ of tally as Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders vie for victory

Pete Buttigieg expressed confidence over the Iowa caucus results on Thursday after days of chaotic vote tallying, even as the head of the Democratic National Party called on the state to “recanvass” the votes.

Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders have remained neck-and-neck for most of the week, and the Associated Press declared on Thursday evening that the race was still too close to call.

With 100% of precincts reporting, the pair were locked in a virtual tie. Buttigieg, leading by just 1.5 state delegate equivalents, had an advantage of about .1 percentage points.

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Trump responds to impeachment acquittal with rambling, vitriolic speech – as it happened

  • Trump speaks at White House for first time since acquittal
  • Report shows Iowa caucus results ‘riddled with inconsistencies’
  • Buttigieg lead over Sanders narrowing in Iowa results
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Related: Trump unleashed: what's next for a president who feels invincible?

Both Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders have claimed victory in Iowa, even as technical delays and reporting issues have prolonged the delay in tallying the Democratic caucus votes. Sanders has touted his raw vote tally; Buttigieg holds a narrow lead in the number of state delegate equivalents he’s amassed.

Both candidates will be speaking tonight in a CNN town hall ahead of the New Hampshire primary contest next week. Deval Patrick and Amy Klobuchar will be participating as well, answering questions from supporters and network hosts.

Related: Sanders and Buttigieg nearly tied in Iowa amid new claims of counting errors

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US politics: Buttigieg leads in Iowa as Senate prepares to acquit Trump – live coverage

  • Buttigieg just ahead of Sanders as Iowa votes trickle in
  • Pelosi rips up copy of Trump State of the Union speech
  • Only one Republican senator likely to vote to convict Trump
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Pete Buttigieg threw everything into winning the Iowa Democratic caucuses and – with 71% of the vote in following Monday’s results debacle – his gamble may well have paid off.

If so, the former mayor of tiny South Bend, Indiana, may look back on this moment as the peak of his political career, or the start of a long, hard slog that could take him all the way to the White House.

Hello and welcome to another big day in American politics.

It’s fair to see Donald Trump is probably having a pretty good week. Last night he got 80 minutes to make his case for a second term on primetime TV with his State of the Union address, as the Democrats continued to struggle to publish results from their first primary contest on Iowa on Monday.

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Sanders on Buttigieg: ‘I don’t know how anyone claims victory without results’ – video

Bernie Sanders has questioned the move by Democratic rival Pete Buttigeig to declare victory in the Iowa caucus. The voting has been marred by a technical error that has led to a delay in releasing the results

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Iowa Democrats apologise for caucus counting problems – video

The Democratic party in Iowa has apologised after it failed to reveal results from the Iowa caucuses. The system for reporting the votes failed to function, while a back-up telephone line also jammed, leading to no declaration of a winner despite the campaign moving on to New Hampshire

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Iowa caucus results: Pete Buttigieg pulls ahead as state Democrats release partial count – live

Some Iowans expressed frustration on Tuesday that the state Democratic party had bungled its moment in the national spotlight after the state Democratic party delayed releasing the results of the caucuses because of a technical glitch.

“They’re not complete, but results are in from a majority of precincts, and they show our campaign in first place,” said Pete Buttigieg, grinning widely as he addressed supporters in New Hampshire. “This is what we have been working more than a year to convince our fellow Americans: that a new and better vision can bring about a new and better day.

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Pete Buttigieg holds early lead in Iowa caucuses after chaos over results

Iowa Democratic party announces partial results with former South Bend mayor trailed closely by Bernie Sanders

Pete Buttigieg, the previously little-known former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, held a narrow lead in the Iowa caucuses on Tuesday night, according to a partial release of a majority of the results by the state Democratic party a day after an embarrassing organizational breakdown that marred the biggest night of the election year so far.

With 71% of the precincts reporting from all of Iowa’s 99 counties, Buttigieg held 26.8% of the state’s delegate count, trailed closely by the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders with 25.2%, the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren with 18.4% and the former vice-president Joe Biden falling well behind with 15.4%. Sanders, meanwhile, had so far earned the largest share of total votes cast.

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Joe Biden heckled on campaign trail in New Hampshire – video

The Democratic presidential candidate said he had had a good night in Iowa and was expecting good results from the caucus. Biden held his speech at a 'get out and vote' event, where he was suddenly heckled by at least one member of the audience who was escorted away as supporters shouted 'get out'

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‘Iowa, you have shocked the nation’: Democrats remain hopeful despite results chaos – video

The Democratic candidates vying to challenge Donald Trump for the US presidency in November were left in limbo and forced to make their scheduled speeches to supporters without knowing the outcome. Despite the lack of results, all candidates sought to claim a form of victory

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Iowa caucuses: results in chaos as Democratic party blames delays on ‘inconsistencies’ – as it happened

  • Party says they are using photos and paper trail to validate results
  • Biden’s campaign sends letter to party demanding ‘full explanation’
  • Iowa caucuses results – live updates
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That’s it from me after a very anti-climatic night in Des Moines. The Democratic presidential candidates and the media circus accompanying them are leaving Iowa with no sense of who won the first voting state in the nominating contest.

Here’s where things stand:

One reporter described Iowa Democratic party chairman Troy Price’s voice on the press call as “deflated”, which is understandable considering the organization saw its worst nightmare unfold before its eyes tonight.

"Thank you and we will be in touch soon," Price said.

An understatement to say he sounded deflated. Since his election in 2017, it's been his sole mission to try to make a fairer, more transparent Iowa caucus that would also run seamlessly. Tonight was IDP's worst nightmare.

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Trump campaign jubilant as Democrats’ big night implodes

Vote-counting chaos in Iowa has been a PR disaster for Democrats

They couldn’t organise a caucus in a brewery. Or a church, or a library, or a school gymnasium. Democrats’ heroic charge to end Donald Trump in the final battle for decency and democracy has spiralled into vote-counting carnage and chaos.

Imagine if the shoe has been on the other foot. Imagine if Trump’s White House had spent four years preparing for an election only to mess it up. It would have been seen, quite rightly, as yet another example of his incompetence, ineptitude and inability to focus on detail or retain experienced staff.

Related: Iowa caucuses off to disastrous start as results delayed due to 'inconsistencies'

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The botched Iowa caucuses have become the ultimate political metaphor

Monday’s voting revealed the Democrats apparently can’t count – not the most promising sign for the 2020 election

Iowa is like soccer. It is the most important of all the least important things in politics.

It may be the first state in the nation to vote in an election that will ultimately decide whether a sociopathic cretin keeps his finger on the nuclear button.

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Iowa caucuses off to disastrous start as results delayed due to ‘inconsistencies’

Hours after voting began there were no results as the state’s Democratic party said it was ‘simply a reporting issue’

The Democratic presidential primary contest got off to a disastrous start on Monday after results from the highly anticipated Iowa Democratic caucuses were dramatically delayed due to “inconsistencies” in the reporting of the data.

The state’s Democratic party said it was performing “quality control” on the numbers “out of an abundance of caution” following reports of problems with a phone app used to relay vote tallies.

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How do the Iowa caucuses work? Your guide to the night

The midwestern state is the first to vote in the presidential primary race. So what are caucuses, and how do they work? Here’s your guide to the night

The Iowa caucuses take place on Monday 3 February, kicking off the long process of nominating a Democratic presidential candidate who will eventually take on Donald Trump in November’s US election.

The primary race is made up of a series of contests called primaries and caucuses that take place in all 50 states plus Washington DC and outlying territories, by which the parties select their presidential nominee from the candidates who are running.

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‘You basically are nothing’: the Americans shut out of the Iowa caucuses

Hundreds of thousands of Iowans are barred from the Iowa caucus because of physical and legal barriers

As Democratic candidates began a last minute blitz across Iowa on Friday evening, nearly a dozen men gathered in a cavernous YMCA meeting room in downtown Des Moines to have a conversation that felt a universe removed from the 2020 race.

They were part of one of the largest groups shut out of Monday’s caucus: people with felony convictions. Iowans are barred from voting for life once they commit a felony, and people can’t vote even if they committed a crime decades ago. The state’s policy, one of the strictest in the country, means more than 42,000 Iowans out of prison won’t have a say in choosing a presidential candidate. Almost 10% of the black voting age population can’t vote because of a felony conviction.

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‘We must defeat Trump’: Democrats make final appeals as Iowa prepares to vote

Polling shows no clear frontrunner in tight race as four Democratic candidates are knotted together at the top

After more than a year of ideological clashes and policy debates, voters in the midwestern state of Iowa are set to have their say on which Democratic presidential candidate they believe is best positioned to defeat Donald Trump in November’s election.

Related: 'Nerve-racking': Iowans under pressure on eve of crucial caucuses

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