The top 2020 Democratic candidates are about to face off during the crucial last debate prior to the Iowa caucuses.
Tuesday's debate in Des Moines, Iowa, will consist of the smallest group of candidates so far, as six Democrats qualified: former Vice President Joe Biden, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and billionaire Tom Steyer. Entrepreneur Andrew Yang didn't make the cut, meaning the debate stage will lack any people of color, NBC News notes.
Pundits are keeping a close eye on Sanders and Warren, whose feud escalated Monday after a report that Sanders told Warren during a private 2018 meeting that a woman couldn't win the presidency in 2020. Sanders denied it, and his campaign manager called it a "lie," but Warren subsequently made the claim on the record. How will the candidates address this dispute?
"Given her recent struggle for momentum and Sanders' rise, this is a fight that Warren wants and needs," The Associated Press observes, suggesting this may be Sanders' "turn for the front-runner treatment." Indeed, Politico writes that the debate "could be a doozy," as Democrats "reluctance to brawl is now a vestige of the past."
Expect plenty of foreign policy questions amid tensions with Iran, as well. During this discussion, Biden's vote for the Iraq war "could receive more scrutiny," especially from Sanders, The New York Times writes.
The debate, CNN notes, is also particularly important for the senators on the stage, who could soon be forced off the campaign trail for President Trump's impeachment trial. That's especially true of Klobuchar, who CNN notes "needs a breakout night." The debate is also Buttigieg's "last chance to stop" slipping poll numbers in Iowa before the caucuses, CNN points out.
The debate is set to air at 9:00 p.m. Eastern on CNN. The eighth Democratic debate is scheduled for Feb. 7, several days after the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 3. Brendan Morrow
President Trump is heavy on the plans and light on the specifics.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Trump confirmed he was considering adding more countries to his travel ban, said he would impose tariffs on European automobiles, and added he was working on a middle-class tax cut. Not that he said which ones, when that would happen, or just what the cut entailed, respectively.
Reports first indicated the Trump administration was planning an addition to its travel ban earlier this month. Trump told the Journal his administration does have plans to add more countries to the list later this month, but wouldn't say more. He also said his administration is "looking at many different things" when it comes to his longstanding — and now faded — push to oust Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
Trump went on to say he's still working on a trade agreement with the EU, saying "I'm going to put tariffs on them if they don't make a deal that's a fair deal." He was asked when that would happen but didn't answer, just saying "they know what the deadline is." And as for policies back in the U.S., Trump said "we're talking a fairly substantial… middle-class tax cut" that'll be revealed in 90 days. The plan's implementation dependent on him being reelected, Republicans holding the Senate, and the GOP taking back the House — the third bit being very unlikely in a presidential election year.
Read the whole interview at The Wall Street Journal. Kathryn Krawczyk
The Wuhan virus, which broke out in China last month and has so far infected more than 300 people and killed six, has reportedly reached U.S. shores, a federal source told CNN.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to announce Tuesday that a person in Washington state has been infected, making the U.S. the sixth country to experience the outbreak of the respiratory illness, along with China, Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, and South Korea. The patient was hospitalized with pneumonia last week after having traveled to eponymous Wuhan, China, where the outbreak appears to have originated at a seafood and poultry market, The New York Times reports.
A lot remains unknown about the virus, although the latest development strengthens the hunch that it spreads from person to person. One of the most pressing questions, Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventative medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told the Times, is how frequent that human-to-human transmission is. Read more at The New York Times and CNN. Tim O'Donnell
Gallup revealed Tuesday that President Trump's approval rating during his third year in office set the record for the biggest partisan gap since the pollster began its records.
Republicans and Democrats are dramatically split — 89 percent of Republicans think Trump is doing a good job, compared to just 7 percent of Democrats. That 82-point difference is the largest ever, beating out the 79-point margin following Trump's second year in office. But what about the third subset, those pesky independents?
Trump's numbers don't crater among independents like they do with Democrats, and have improved over the last year — his 38 percent approval rating among non-affiliated respondents is higher than his 35 percent average rating to date, but they're still historically low. In the post-World War II era every other president has reached the 40 percent threshold among independents, with the lowest mark going to Jimmy Carter's 42 percent.
Overall, Trump checked in with a 42 percent approval rating during year no. 3, an uptick from his first and second years. It's not far behind the numbers averaged by former presidents like Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan at this point in their tenures, but it's still one of the lowest three-year averages during a first term since World War II. Only Carter's 37.4 percent trails. The poll was conducted over the phone from a random sample of 4,560 adults living in the U.S. by Gallup between Oct. 14, 2019 and Jan. 16, 2020. The margin of error is 2 percentage points. Read more at Gallup.