• Trump’s goal for January: win more primaries than he loses court cases.
• Donald Trump romped in Iowa, as widely expected and projected in every single pre-caucus poll. He is well on his way to a third consecutive Republican nomination and is duly vacuuming up endorsements from GOP officials. Ron DeSantis banked everything on Iowa and, while he managed to beat out Nikki Haley for second place after a long war of attrition, he lost to Trump by 30 points. It’s hard to see a plausible path ahead for him. Obviously, running against Donald Trump this year was always going to be difficult, but the DeSantis campaign still has to count among the most disappointing and poorly run in recent memory. Nikki Haley didn’t get the second place she hoped would generate momentum going into New Hampshire, where Trump leads in almost every poll. She has sometimes looked competitive in the Granite State, though, and has a (slight) chance of catching Trump there. But everything suggests her coalition is too dependent on moderates and independents to be built for victory in a Republican-nomination battle. The party has better options than Donald Trump, but, if the Iowa results are any indication, it is not interested in them.
• The latest two candidates to drop out of the Republican primaries represent different varieties of futility. The first, that of Asa Hutchinson, merits respect. Hutchinson, a solid if unspectacular Arkansas politician (governor, U.S. representative) and civil servant, staked out a firmly Trump-skeptical position and said forthright things about the former president’s character and legal troubles when most of the candidates wouldn’t. This was a costly stance in a Trump-friendly primary electorate; that he seemed like a figure from the GOP’s past, out of step with the party on other issues (such as transgenderism), doomed his candidacy from the start. The second brand of futility belongs to Vivek Ramaswamy. The biotech entrepreneur ran almost as a Trump surrogate, especially in the debates (from which Trump was absent), with extra helpings of conspiracy-theorizing. Trump appreciated the sycophancy, but in the days before the Iowa caucuses he turned on Ramaswamy. After the results came in, Ramaswamy endorsed Trump, perhaps with an eye toward a cabinet appointment or a long-shot vice-presidential slot. Many dismiss him as an insincere opportunist, but this is unfair: The opportunism seems entirely sincere.
• Trump stormed out of Iowa and on to . . . no, not New Hampshire, but a courtroom in Lower Manhattan. He is defending himself in a second trial on civil claims by journalist and advice columnist E. Jean Carroll. She alleges that Trump raped her in the mid Nineties. In 2019, she went public. Then-president Trump vilified her as a liar trying to sell books. Carroll sued him for defamation, then added a sexual-assault claim. Trump, by claiming presidential immunity, was able to delay the 2019 defamation trial in appellate courts. But, being Trump, he repeated his verbal attacks on Carroll in 2022, so she sued him again. After a jury found him liable for sexual abuse (it did not reach agreement on the more serious charge of rape) and defamation, awarding Carroll $5 million in damages, he launched more diatribes, and she sued yet again in 2023. It is the open defamation claims (2019 and 2023) that are now being tried. Clinton-appointed judge Lewis Kaplan has barred Trump from claiming innocence, reasoning that the first jury already resolved that—this trial is just about damages. Trump, of course, is livid and unable to retain competent counsel, so the trial has become a circus.
• The Georgia prosecution of Trump and 18 others is mired in scandal. One defendant alleges that District Attorney Fani Willis asked Fulton County for funding to address a Covid-era backlog of cases, then diverted nearly $1 million to hire private lawyer Nathan Wade as a special prosecutor on the case. The further allegation is that Willis has been romantically involved with the married Wade and benefited from the fees she paid him as the two jetted to or cruised in Napa Valley, Florida, and the Caribbean. Wade is an experienced attorney but has never tried a felony case, much less a complex RICO prosecution. There are questions about whether Wade filed required oaths of office with the court; meanwhile, Willis has been subpoenaed in the divorce case brought by Wade’s wife (from which some of the defendant’s allegations were mined before the file was mysteriously sealed). The defendant is seeking dismissal of the indictment and disqualification of Willis and Wade. In her first public comments on the allegations, Willis admitted that she is “flawed” but cried racism. The progressive Democrats who’ve lined up to prosecute Trump are a motley crew.
• Cold weather can make the battery of an electric vehicle (EV) take longer to charge and its range to fall substantially, especially if a chilly driver unwisely turns on the heater. Chicago recently received a taste of what this could mean, when a very cold snap left some EV drivers hurrying to charging stations only to find lines so long that their cars were out of power before the rescuing volts could flow. Infuriating, but it was their choice to buy an EV. As climate-related regulations tighten, however, the ability to choose a new car other than an EV will be steadily reduced—and, in some places, eliminated. That’s bad in principle and, as drivers may discover, in practice. It will also lessen the competitive pressure on EV manufacturers to innovate their way out of this and other problems.
• In one of his first acts as president, Joe Biden removed the Iranian-backed Houthi terrorist sect from the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. The move wasn’t predicated on any assessment of the Houthis’ designs or capabilities. It was instead intended to isolate Saudi Arabia, which is engaged in a brutal war against that rebel outfit to prevent it from conquering the whole of Yemen. Biden’s conspicuous failure over the past three months to respond with force to the Houthis’ campaign of terrorism and piracy in the Gulf of Aden was an outgrowth of its misguided commitment to embarrassing the Saudis. In the end, it was the Biden administration that was embarrassed. This week, following some reluctant retaliatory strikes on Houthi positions, the administration redesignated the Houthis as terrorists. And yet it still refuses to deem the group a “foreign terrorist organization.” Rather, the Houthis have been assigned to a less consequential list that will not require the administration to freeze their assets even as we target them with precision-guided munitions. The administration may believe it is sending an exquisitely calibrated message, but that message will read as weakness and irresolution where it counts.
• In Gaza, Hamas is holding something like 110 hostages. (The exact number is impossible to know.) They have killed something like 30 hostages. (Again, the exact number, right now, is unknowable.) Every hostage, dead or alive, ought to have pages written about him or her. But this we can say, briefly: Israel cannot coexist with Hamas—with a neighbor bent on eliminating the Jewish state at large. Either Israel or Hamas must go. We vote Hamas.
• In Taiwan, current vice president William Lai triumphed in a presidential election on January 13. Lai is a member of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the party that holds the most skeptical view of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and was, until recently, openly supportive of independence. Lai won with just a bit more than 40 percent of the vote, and the DPP failed to win a parliamentary majority. His victory can be explained largely by the failure of Kuomintang candidate Hou Yu-ih to form a combined ticket with insurgent candidate Ko Wen-je. An election run smoothly, delivering a complex result that will force the parties to share levers of power, is another victory for Taiwan’s democratic self-governance and a setback for Beijing. But the biggest challenge may be yet to come. The CCP detests Lai, viewing him as a proponent of Taiwan’s independence, and will likely retaliate, perhaps around the time of his inauguration in May, with a new trade war and provocative military exercises—or worse. The U.S. and its friends in Taiwan must prepare for this.
• The meeting of the World Economic Forum, held annually in Davos, Switzerland, is loathed by populists the world over, and not without reason. The schemes and discussions of the global elites in the public and private sectors who gather there tend to center on how they might siphon power toward themselves, in their roles in their home countries and in international institutions, and use that power to direct their supposedly backward native populations toward supposedly more enlightened mores. But the annual confab has looked even sillier and more desperate in recent years, as the grand plans of its attendees have crashed to earth. So it was a breath of fresh air when Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, made an appearance this year. Milei is an unusual but welcome type: a flamboyant academic free-marketeer. In his remarks at the WEF he reiterated his commitments to freedom, capitalism, and individualism, and to his stances against collectivism, socialism, and the “political caste.” Sounding positively Reaganesque, Milei proclaimed directly to the social engineers in the audience that “the state is not the solution; the state is the problem itself.” The world could use more Mileis—and fewer World Economic Forums.
• In his Angelus address at St. Peter’s Square on New Year’s Day, Pope Francis spoke of his “deep concern” about “what is happening in Nicaragua, where bishops and priests have been deprived of their freedom.” Two weeks later, Nicaraguan authorities announced their release of 19 political prisoners. Among the two Catholic seminarians and 17 clergymen they sent to Rome were two bishops, including Rolando Álvarez, who was jailed last August after several years of criticizing the regime of Daniel Ortega and aiding efforts by the Catholic Church to bolster Nicaraguan civil society amid government oppression. In praising the competence and sensitivity of the Vatican diplomats who negotiated the prisoners’ release, government officials may have sought to deflect attention from the embarrassment to which the pope exposed the regime on the global stage. The church’s temporal soft power is sometimes underestimated. The good news about the release of Álvarez and the other 18 Catholic clerics is tempered by the imposition of their exile and by the knowledge that other advocates for freedom in Nicaragua remain behind bars.
• With diversity, equity, and inclusion coming under renewed scrutiny following the resignation of Harvard president Claudine Gay, the University of Michigan has adopted what it calls “principles on diversity of thought and freedom of expression.” The university’s president, Santa Ono, said this: “Open inquiry and spirited debate are critical for promoting discovery and creativity” and for “preparing our students to be informed and actively engaged in our democracy.” He further said, “At this time of great division, it is more important than ever that we come together in a shared commitment to pluralism, to mutual respect, and to freedom of speech and diversity of thought at this great public university.” On the same page as the university’s president are its regents, one of whom said, “Every member of our academic community should expect to confront ideas that differ from their own, however uncomfortable these encounters may be. This can only occur when diversity of viewpoints exists and freedom of expression flourishes.” The University of Chicago pioneered these principles years ago. It is cheering to see another major university catching up with its good sense.
• First the Seattle Seahawks announced the end of Pete Carroll’s run as head coach. Hired in 2010, he hit the ground running and rebuilt a team that he led to two consecutive Super Bowls. The Seahawks won in 2013 and lost in 2014 to the New England Patriots, whom he coached for three seasons in the late 1990s. Bill Belichick succeeded him in Foxborough and (with the help of Tom Brady) built a dynasty, leading the Patriots to nine Super Bowls and winning six of them. The day after the news that Carroll had stepped down in Seattle, the Patriots announced that they and Belichick were parting ways after 24 years. Carroll will remain an executive for the Seahawks, and Belichick is reported to be already interviewing for the head-coach position in Atlanta. Between the announcements in Seattle and New England came news from Alabama that Nick Saban was retiring, he of the seven NCAA national championships. Saban and Belichick had coached together in Cleveland and bonded over their Croatian ancestry, which Carroll shares on his mother’s side. Pete, Nick, Bill: Congratulations.