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Vivian Ho in San Francisco (now), Joan E Greve in Manchester, New Hampshire, and Colin Blackstock (earlier)

Sanders and Buttigieg campaigns request partial recanvass of Iowa caucuses – as it happened

Pete Buttigieg shakes hands with Senator Bernie Sanders during the eighth Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential campaign season at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Pete Buttigieg shakes hands with Senator Bernie Sanders during the eighth Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential campaign season at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. Photograph: Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images

Live political reporting continues in Tuesday’s blog:

Evening summary

The rallies still rage in New Hampshire tonight, but that’s it from us. Stay tuned for more news from our stellar politics team, who will have updates.

  • President Trump met with just some families of victims of the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida - and this select group apparently did not include those who are calling for gun control.
  • Retired brigadier general Peter Zwack had some choice words for Senator Lindsey Graham and his support of the firing of impeachment witness Alexander Vindman.
  • The South Dakota bill that proposed jail time for doctors who gave puberty-blocking drugs to transgender children died in Senate committee.
  • Federal prosecutors asked for a judge to sentence longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone to up to nine years in prison.

At the Trump rally in Manchester, a familiar chant has appeared to have turned on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

More in the rally roundup:

And Pete Buttigieg is holding court in Milford.

Continuing on our rally roundup, here’s Elizabeth Warren in Portsmouth:

And let’s not forget the Bernie Sanders event at the University of New Hampshire tonight, which will include an appearance from Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a performance from the Strokes.

Because it’s New Hampshire primary eve, there are multiple rallies happening simultaneously and it is a lot. Lauren Gambino is in Manchester, where Donald Trump Jr and Kimberly Guilfoyle warmed up the crowd for President Trump and the vice-president, Mike Pence.

Elsewhere in Manchester, Joan Greve is at a Joe Biden rally.

Updated

Remember Roger Stone? It was only just three months ago that the self-described “dirty trickster” and longtime adviser of Donald Trump was found guilty of obstructing a congressional investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, but after these past few weeks, that all feels years before.

Federal prosecutors haven’t forgotten, however – and today they’re asking a judge to sentence him to up to nine years in prison.

“Stone knew the gravity of the House intelligence committee’s investigation when he obstructed it by giving false testimony and tampering with a witness,” the sentencing memo reads. “Indeed, Stone acknowledged as much in his opening statement before the committee. Stone chose – consciously, repeatedly and flagrantly – to obstruct and interfere with the search for the truth on an issue of vital importance to all Americans. This court should impose a sentence that accurately reflects the value the judicial system places on the need to allow witnesses to testify truthfully without threat or interference, and the importance of testifying truthfully under oath.”

Read the whole document here.

Updated

The retired brigadier general Peter Zwack, a former supervisor of impeachment witness Alexander Vindman, reacted strongly to Senator Lindsey Graham supporting Vindman’s ousting, exclaiming out right, “This is ridiculous!”

“Senator Graham, I always had a lot of respect for you,” Zwack said. “I met you when I was in Afghanistan in 2008 when you arrived with Senator McCain and Joe Lieberman as part of the three amigos. We thought you guys were rock stars. Where are you now, sir?”

Updated

The Bernie Sanders campaign spent $13,837 on Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. The Mike Bloomberg campaign spent $16,877 at a single sushi restaurant - and more than $10,000 on Air Culinaire, an in-flight catering service for private jets. The Tom Steyer campaign spent $14,474 on fruit delivery.

The intrepid Julia Carrie Wong dug into some Federal Election Commission filings this week to find out what the 2020 Democrats are feeding their staff:

The South Dakota bill that proposed jailing doctors for giving puberty-blocking drugs to transgender children failed to get enough support in a senate committee on Monday.

The Republican-dominated committee voted 5-2 to kill the legislation, according to the Associated Press.

Updated

Nadler demands answers on Giuliani

The House judiciary chair, Jerry Nadler, sent a letter to William Barr, the attorney general, today, demanding answers after he and Senator Lindsey Graham admitted that “Rudy Giuliani is sending information concerning Ukraine to the Department of Justice through a special intake process.”

“As you know the department has formal, established channels by which to receive information and begin investigations,” the letter reads. “This new channel to Mr Giuliani would seem to be a significant departure from those traditional channels.”

Read the full letter here.

Updated

Donald Trump met today with some families of victims of the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, to discuss ways to keep schools safe – but it appears he was selective in which families he invited to the Oval Office.

Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was one of 17 killed almost two years ago at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school, was escorted out of the State of the Union last week when Trump defended the US constitution’s second amendment and the right to bear arms – and Guttenberg loudly objected.

It appeared that the White House invited just the Stand With Parkland group, which does not include all the families, specifically to discuss how to guard schools against mass shootings by improving building designs and employing best practices – and not talk about gun control, on which other Parkland activists have turned their focus.

Updated

The Utah senator Mitt Romney was already “formally NOT invited” to this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference after he broke ranks with the Republican party to cast a vote for President Trump’s impeachment.

The conference chair, Matt Schlapp, went on Greta Van Susteren’s Full Court Press to explain that he feared for Romney’s physical safety.

“This year, I would actually be afraid for his physical safety, people are so mad at him,” he said.

He later tempered that sentiment on Twitter:

Updated

Hey all, Vivian Ho on the west coast here, taking over for the inimitable Joan Greve. Let’s see where the rest of the day takes us.

Evening summary

That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Vivian Ho, will take over for the next few hours.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders have both requested partial recanvasses of the Iowa caucus results, after the state’s Democratic party said Buttigieg appeared to edge out Sanders by 0.1% in the state delegate equivalent metric, which is used to determine the winner of the first voting state.
  • Polls show Sanders leading in New Hampshire, which will hold its primary tomorrow, with Buttigieg trailing in second place.
  • A national poll showed Sanders jumping ahead of Joe Biden after the former vice president’s poor showing in Iowa, as Michael Bloomberg crept into third place.
  • The White House officially released its annual budget proposal, which calls for spending cuts to safety-net programs like Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
  • The number of US troops diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries from last month’s strike on a military base in Iraq has surpassed 100. After the attack, Trump initially claimed no service members had been injured in the strike.

Vivian will have much more coming up, so stay tuned.

Amy Klobuchar appears to be riding a wave of momentum in New Hampshire after her widely praised debate performance on Friday.

Her campaign event in Exeter was at capacity and stretched into an overflow room, allowing the Minnesota senator to address more than 500 people, with one day to go until the state’s primary.

Several polls have shown Klobuchar in the double digits in recent days, but she will need to hit at least 15% to receive any national delegates from New Hampshire.

Although most New Hampshire voters will head to the polls tomorrow, three small towns with a tradition of midnight voting will cast their ballots later tonight, and the results will be immediately available.

For some non-election news, Trump’s top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, indicated the US may prioritize the EU over the UK in crafting its next trade deal.

Bloomberg News reports:

Trade talks with the EU and U.K. are on separate tracks but because of ‘some structure’ on the EU side, ‘reigniting that will be easier’ than starting from scratch with the U.K., White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said in an interview.

Since a new European Commission took office late last year, officials on both sides have pointed to a reset in the U.S.-EU relationship and agree there’s a sense of urgency for a truce.

Those comments come after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson decided to allow the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei to supply equipment for the country’s 5G network, over the objections of the Trump administration.

That move prompted a testy phone call between Trump and Johnson, during which the US president was reportedly “apoplectic” about the UK’s decision.

Meanwhile, presidential candidate Tom Steyer is calling on the Democratic National Committee to extend the qualification deadline for the next debate, which will take place on February 19 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Steyer wrote in a letter to DNC Chairman Tom Perez, “I urge you to expand the window or make sure that there is significant polling in those states prior to the next debate. The voters in Nevada and South Carolina deserve to have their voices heard in this process and to narrow the debate qualifiers without their involvement undercuts the importance of the early states in this election.”

Steyer, who hit less than 1% in the Iowa caucuses and is not polling well in New Hampshire, noted that the polling window for the Nevada debate is about three weeks shorter than past qualifciation windows.

Steyer has been polling much better in Nevada and South Carolina and is hoping strong performances there will give his campaign a much-needed shot in the arm, but that will be more difficult to accomplish if he’s not on the Nevada debate stage.

One more note on that Quinnipiac poll, if Joe Biden’s support among African-American Democrats is indeed nosediving, it would make it much easier for other candidates -- particularly Michael Bloomberg or Bernie Sanders -- to quickly outpace him in the delegate count.

Updated

Sanders and Buttigieg campaigns request partial recanvass of Iowa

As expected, Bernie Sanders’ campaign has filed a request for a partial recanvass of the Iowa caucus results after the state’s Democratic party concluded that Pete Buttigieg defeated Sanders by 0.1%.

Sanders’ campaign said that “errors” in the tabulation of results may have prevented the Vermont senator from picking up an additional national delegate.

“While a recanvass is just the first step in the process and we don’t expect it to change the current calculations, it is a necessary part of making sure Iowans can trust the final results of the caucus,” Jeff Weaver, a senior Sanders adviser, said in a statement.

But now, the Buttigieg camp is also asking for a partial recanvass in response to the Sanders team’s request.

The effect of these dueling recanvass requests will likely be minimal. Iowa is largely important because of its status as the first voting state, and the results have already made clear that Buttigieg and Sanders effectively tied in the state delegate equivalent (SDE) metric used to determine the winner of the caucuses.

But the fact that the results from the Monday caucuses are still being contested underscores the importance of tomorrow’s New Hampshire primary, when candidates will get another chance to claim an undisputed victory.

That Quinnipiac University poll also showed Joe Biden may be losing support among African-American Democrats, who have buoyed the former vice president’s standing in past polls.

Biden still registered the highest level of support with black Democrats at 27%, but Michael Bloomberg and Bernie Sanders were close on his heels at 22% and 19%.

Those results could have serious ramifications for the South Carolina primary at the end of the month, considering the majority of the state’s primary voters are African-American.

Biden has pointed to the next two voting states, Nevada and South Carolina, as the “launching pad” for his candidacy. If he cannot put in a strong showing in South Carolina, he will almost certainly face calls to drop out of the race.

Sanders jumps ahead in national poll after strong Iowa performance

A new national poll shows Bernie Sanders claiming the top spot while Joe Biden has slipped by nine points since late last month, indicating the former vice president has taken a serious hit from his poor showing in Iowa.

According to the Quinnipiac University poll, Sanders hits 25% with Democrats nationally, while Biden trails at 17%. In comparison, a January 28 poll showed Biden at 26% and Sanders at 21%.

Interestingly, the candidate who has seen the most signficant rise since the last poll is Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire candidate who has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to make a play for the crucial Super Tuesday states.

The Quinnipiac poll found Bloomberg at 15% compared to 8% late last month. Bloomberg was virtually tied with Elizabeth Warren, who registered at 14%, and slightly ahead of Pete Buttigieg, who crept up to 10% after his strong showing in the Iowa caucuses.

As the Democratic presidential candidates deliver their closing pitches to New Hampshire voters, the vice president and the president’s daughter and adviser have arrived in the Granite State for Trump’s rally tonight.

Trump and Mike Pence will address supporters at a rally in Manchester tonight. Some rallygoers have been lined up outside Southern New Hampshire University Arena since yesterday morning to get in.

The president hosted a similar rally in Des Moines days before the Iowa caucuses, a blatant attempt to undercut the Democratic presidential candidates just before the state’s voters cast their ballots.

Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard confirmed she will “of course” back the party’s presidential nominee if she doesn’t win the primary.

Gabbard largely skipped the first voting state of Iowa and has instead focused her campaign efforts on New Hampshire, hoping to win over some of the state’s independent voters who are allowed to vote in either party’s primary.

But she has consistently failed to poll above 5% in the most recent surveys from New Hampshire, so it’s unclear whether her campaign will continue beyond tomorrow night.

Amazon wants Donald Trump to testify in its lawsuit over the Pentagon’s award of a $10bn cloud computing contract to Microsoft.

Jeff Bezos.
Jeff Bezos. Photograph: Pablo Martínez Monsiváis/AP

This is not likely to happen, to put it mildly – think Trump’s back-and-forth with Robert Mueller or the White House’s attitude to allowing relevant testimony in the impeachment inquiry – but it’s a tantalising notion nonetheless and in a filing with the US Court of Federal Claims unsealed on Monday, the tech giant asked for it anyway.

According to the Associated Press…

Amazon said Trump has a ‘well-documented personal animus towards’ Amazon, its chief executive Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post, which Bezos owns. Amazon says that Trump is the only person who can testify about the ‘totality of his conversations and the overall message he conveyed’ about the bidding process.

Trump has accused Amazon of not paying its fair share of taxes and of putting brick-and-mortar stores out of business. He has also gone after Bezos personally and accused the Post of being Amazon’s ‘chief lobbyist’.

Oddly enough, the AP added…

The White House, Pentagon and Department of Justice didn’t immediately return requests for comment.

Less oddly, Amazon did have a statement, saying: “The question is whether the president of the United States should be allowed to use the budget of the [Department of Defense] to pursue his own personal and political ends.”

It would rather seem that under the current balance of power in Washington, a president can.

Absent a ruling on that, however, a judge could rule this week on whether Microsoft can start work on the contract at issue.

While you wait for that, here’s some recent Guardian reporting about Bezos and a Saudi prince close to the Trump administration:

More than 100 US troops diagnosed with brain injuries after Iraq strike

More than 100 American troops have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries from last month’s strike on a military base in Iraq, an attack that came after the US killing of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani.

CNN reports:

That’s an increase of at least 36 cases from the end of January when the Pentagon said 64 service members had been diagnosed with injuries. ...

Several Pentagon officials told CNN last month that the number of diagnosed cases is likely to continue to change. Approximately 200 people who were in the blast zone at the time of the attack have been screened for symptoms.

During a news conference at the Pentagon late last month, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said the increasing number of reported cases stems in part from the fact that the injuries, for the most part, fall into the category of ‘mild TBI’ which takes time for symptoms to manifest.

After the attack, Trump initially claimed that no service members had been injured in the strike, and he later received criticism for referring to the soldiers’ brain injuries as “headaches.”

Afternoon summary

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • Democratic presidential candidates are launching attacks against each other as polls show Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg leading in New Hampshire, which will hold its primary tomorrow.
  • The White House released its annual budget proposal, which includes spending cuts for safety-net programs like Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
  • Four members of the Chinese military were charged by the Justice Department in connection to the 2017 hack of the credit reporting agency Equifax.

The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

White House officially releases budget proposal

The White House has officially released its annual budget proposal, which includes spending cuts to safety-net programs like Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

To reiterate, the president’s budget often bears little resemblance to the final package approved by Congress, but the proposal is read for signs of the administration’s priorities.

In the case of this year’s budget, a number of commentators noted Trump pledged not to cut Social Security or Medicare two days before releasing a proposal that called for just that.

The Washington Post has more details on the budget:

The budget would cut Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program and also wring savings from Medicare despite Trump’s repeated promises to safeguard Medicare and Social Security.

It takes aim at domestic spending with cuts that are sure to be rejected by Congress, including slashing the Environmental Protection Agency budget by 26.5 percent over the next year, and cutting the budget of the Health and Human Services department by 9 percent. ...

It would target the Education Department is for a nearly 8 percent cut, the Interior Department would be cut 13.4 percent, and the Housing and Urban Development department would be cut 15.2 percent. The State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development would be cut by 22 percent.

The proposed cuts stand in contrast to proposals by major Democratic candidates to expand environmental, education and health care spending, setting up a clash between Trump and his 2020 rivals over their major campaign priorities.

Two other interesting numbers from the latest New Hampshire poll: only half of likely Democratic primary voters say they are “definitely decided” on who they will support.

And although Amy Klobuchar’s 7% showing in the poll put her in fifth place, the Minnesota senator saw a noticeable uptick in support after her impressive debate performance, indicating she could still pull off a surprise tomorrow night.

Another New Hampshire poll shows Sanders leading

Another poll from New Hampshire shows Bernie Sanders leading in the second voting state, with Pete Buttigieg trailing by several points.

According to the latest CNN poll, Sanders is at 29% with New Hampshire’s likely primary voters, compared to Buttigieg’s 22%.

Joe Biden is a distant third at 11%, putting him in a virtual tie with Elizabeth Warren at 10%. And despite her strong debate performance, Amy Klobuchar registers at only 7%.

Biden has already been trying to downplay expectations in New Hampshire, predicting that he will “take a hit” there, as he did in Iowa. The former vice president has instead tried to redirect attention to the next two voting states of Nevada and South Carolina, where he is expected to perform better.

But there’s no question that Sanders will be in a strong position leaving New Hampshire if he can win there after fighting Buttigieg to a near-draw in Iowa. It would likely solidify Sanders’ position as the frontrunner in the race.

Hosting a business session with a group of governors at the White House, Trump once again went after Mitt Romney, the only Republican senator to support an article of impeachment.

“How’s Mitt Romney?” Trump asked Utah governor Gary Herbert, according to a pool report. “You keep him. We don’t want him.” Herbert then shifted the conversation to the national debt.

The president has repeatedly lashed out against Romney since last week, when the Utah senator voted in favor of the first article of impeachment, abuse of power.

Speaking to CBS News one day before the New Hampshire primary, Amy Klobuchar pledged to restore the “sacred trust” between the president and Americans that she said had “broken down” under Trump.

The Minnesota senator also scoffed at the attacks that Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden have launched against each other. “They should go have a push-up contest somewhere,” Klobuchar said.

Coming off her widely praised debate performance on Friday, Klobuchar is enjoying a bump in New Hampshire polls, with at least one survey showing her in third place after Bernie Sanders and Buttigieg.

But it’s unclear whether that momentum can propel her to a solid finish tomorrow, which she will need to keep her campaign going.

Four Chinese military members charged in Equifax hack

Four members of the Chinese military have been charged by the Justice Department in connection to the 2017 hack of the credit reporting agency Equifax.

The AP reports:

The 2017 breach affected roughly 145 million people, with the hackers successfully stealing names, Social Security numbers and other personal information stored in the company’s databases.

The four — members of the People’s Liberation Army, an arm of the Chinese military — are also accused of stealing the company’s trade secrets, law enforcement officials said.

The case comes as the Trump administration has warned against what it sees as the growing political and economic influence of China, and efforts by Beijing to collect data on Americans and steal scientific research and innovation.

Voting group plans texting effort to prevent wrongful purges

A voting advocacy group plans to text 1 million voters ahead of the 2020 election to prevent eligible voters from being wrongfully removed from the voter rolls.

Volunteer checking voters in at polling place.
Volunteer checking voters in at polling place. Photograph: Hero Images/Getty Images

The texting push from the group, All Voting is Local, comes amid growing alarm in the United States over the way election officials can remove someone from the rolls while giving them limited notice. Several states remove people from the rolls if they don’t vote over a period of years and miss mailings from election officials asking them to confirm their address.

Federal law requires states to regularly clean their voter rolls. But critics say using mailers and voting inactivity is not a reliable way to identify voters who move. They say it disenfranchises people who don’t vote and discard a government mailing that looks like junk. They also say it’s a process that favors Republicans because young people and minorities, who tend to favor Democrats, are more likely to move. Georgia and Ohio removed around 250,000 combined voters using the process in 2019.

The texting effort will focus on four key 2020 states: Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, and Arizona and could expand to others. The group is regularly reviewing voting rolls in those states and texting anyone who drops off, said Kelly Brewington, a spokeswoman for All Voting is Local, which is part of the Leadership Conference Education Fund.

“In this modern era, the idea that you’re going to send a mailer to people and that’s going to be a basis for removing them, that’s not right,” said Hannah Fried, the national campaign director for All Voting is Local. “You need to be reaching people where they are, by text, by phone, by email.”

The group also plans to test different messaging in the text messages and tracking whether there are particular times of the day that are most effective for contacting people, Fried said.

“This is a more effective way of doing it. It’s a cheaper way of doing it, and we absolutely think election officials should be taking this on.”

All Voting is Local says the effort will build on previously successful efforts to get people to update their voter registration. In 2018, the group said it sent text messages to more than 380,000 voters in Ohio and 62,000 of them eventually updated their voter registration. The group was also among several that scoured a public list of Ohio voters set to be purged last year. The groups ultimately identified around 40,000 errors on the list.

Updated

Barr acknowledges channel between DOJ and Giuliani

Attorney general William Barr acknowledged during a press conference that the Justice Department has established a channel to hear information from Rudy Giulaini, the president’s personal lawyer, on Ukraine.

Barr said the department has to be “very careful” about information coming from Ukraine, where there are many “agendas and cross currents” at play.

But he added, “We had established an intake process in the field so that any information coming in about Ukraine could be carefully scrutinized by the department ... including anything Mr. Giuliani might provide.”

According to those who testified in the impeachment hearings, Giuliani played a key role in trying to pressure Ukraine to investigate the business activities of Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son, even though US and Ukrainian officials have said Biden did not violate any laws with his work for the gas company Burisma.

Senator Lindsey Graham, another close ally of Trump’s, said yesterday that the Justice Department had “created a process” to review information provided by Giuliani.

Holding a campaign event in Manchester, New Hampshire, Bernie Sanders once again criticized the fundraising practices of Pete Buttigieg.

Sanders and Buttigieg, who have led New Hampshire polls in the days leading up to tomorrow’s primary, volleyed attacks back and forth over the weekend.

Sanders has consistently criticized Buttigieg’s decision to hold high-dollar fundraising events, while Buttigieg has accused Sanders of supporting unrealstic proposals that divide the Democratic Party.

Updated

With just one day to go until the New Hampshire primary, the New York Times is out with a new report on why and how the Iowa caucuses became such a debacle:

As the smartphone app for reporting the results of the Iowa Democratic caucuses began failing last Monday night, party officials instructed precinct leaders to move to Plan B: calling the results into caucus headquarters, where dozens of volunteers would enter the figures into a secure system.

But when many of those volunteers tried to log on to their computers, they made an unsettling discovery. They needed smartphones to retrieve a code, but they had been told not to bring their phones into the “boiler room” in Des Moines.

As a torrent of results were phoned in from school gymnasiums, union halls and the myriad other gathering places that made the Iowa caucuses a world-famous model of democracy, it soon became clear that the whole process was melting down.

Volunteers resorted to passing around a spare iPad to log into the system. Melissa Watson, the state party’s chief financial officer, who was in charge of the boiler room, did not know how to operate a Google spreadsheet application used to input data, Democratic officials later acknowledged.

The Iowa Democratic Party said in a statement yesterday, nearly a week after the caucuses were held, that it appears Pete Buttigieg edged out Bernie Sanders by 0.1%.

But the narrow margin between them, combined with the concerns raised about the accuracy of the results, has led some to doubt that final assessment.

All of this has highlighted the importance of tomorrow’s primary in New Hampshire, giving candidates a clean slate and an opportunity to claim an undisputed victory.

Democrats criticize Trump's budget proposal

The White House is also releasing its annual budget plan today, and the proposal is already giving Democrats plenty of ammo for the presidential election.

The Washington Post reports:

The White House is proposing a $4.8 trillion election-year budget Monday that would slash major domestic and safety net programs, setting up a stark contrast with President Trump’s rivals as voting gets under way in the Democratic presidential primary.

The budget would cut Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program and also wring savings from Medicare despite Trump’s repeated promises to safeguard Medicare and Social Security.

It takes aim at domestic spending with cuts that are sure to be rejected by Congress, including slashing the Environmental Protection Agency budget by 26.5 percent over the next year, and cutting the budget of the Health and Human Services department by 9 percent.

The White House’s budget proposal is always considered an initial offer, and it often bears little resemblence to the final package approved by Congress.

However, the proposal is often viewed as a reflection of the administration’s priorities, and Democrats are already saying this budget underscores the need to defeat Trump in November.

From a former adviser to Barack Obama:

As Democratic presidential candidates make their closing pitches in New Hampshire, Trump is retweeting messages from supporters, including one who has a very interesting handle.

A New York Times reporter noted that Trump frequently retweets messages from this particular account.

In an interview with CBS News this morning, Joe Biden laughed off the possibility that the Trump administration is investigating his son’s business activities in Ukraine.

Biden dismissed the idea of government officials using information obtained by Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer and a key figure in the impeachment inquiry, as absurd.

Asked by Gayle King whether his son should be considered “fair game,” Biden said, “I don’t think our sons are fair game at all.”

Joe Biden’s team clearly has its knives out for Pete Buttigieg as some polls indicate the young former mayor is peeling away some of the former vice president’s supporters, with just one day to go until the New Hampshire primary.

Speaking to CNN this morning, Biden campaign adviser Symone Sanders said that it would be “a mistake” to nominate a candidate who last served as the mayor of a town smaller than Manchester, New Hampshire.

Asked directly whether she believed Buttigieg would be ready to serve on day one of his presidency, Sanders said “no.”

Different Strokes for different folks

Donald Trump has been busy on Twitter this morning, most recently claiming “the Fake News” will not cover “the big crowds forming for my New Hampshire Rally tonight”. That rally is at the SNHU Arena in Manchester, and yesterday the Union-Leader, at least, covered supporters lining up early.

Julian Casablancas performs.
Julian Casablancas performs. Photograph: Matthew Baker/Getty Images

As it happens, in the Democratic primary the Union-Leader has endorsed Amy Klobuchar, the Minnesota senator enjoying a mini-surge after Friday’s debate and targeting third place over Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren.

Also as it happens, among other primary-themed events in New Hampshire on Monday night there will be the eye-catching combination of The Strokes and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – she of the Evita comparisons and probably imaginary primary challenge to New York senator Chuck Schumer that Trump seems so taken by – turning out for Bernie Sanders in Durham.

This is what Strokes lead singer Julian Casablancas had to say on the subject:

We are honoured to be associated with such a dedicated, diligent, & trustworthy patriot – and fellow native New Yorker! As the only truly non-corporate candidate, Bernie Sanders represents our only chance to overthrow corporate power and help return America to democracy. This is why we support him.

The “Get Out the Vote Concert Rally” will take place on, wait for it, the Last Nite before the primary, and it should not be Hard to Explain why this may be seen as a coup for the Sanders campaign.

Other forced puns based on Strokes songs the Guardian doesn’t know, the Guardian only having bought the first album ages ago and lost interest since then, should be sent to the Guardian in a stamped addressed envelope, where they will be promptly burned.

The latest polling for New Hampshire is good news for Bernie Sanders, who is on 27%, and Pete Buttigieg (19%), both of whom have seen their overall numbers increase since Iowa. But it’s not great news for Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren (both on 12%) who appear to be struggling to pick up any momentum, and in Biden’s case appear to be going backwards.

The poll from a Boston Globe/Suffolk University tracking poll shows that Biden is leaking support from likely New Hampshire primary voters, down six percentage points since Iowa, leaving him in a battle for third place with Warren and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar (14%), who has increased her support off the back of a standout performance in the candidates’ debate on Friday evening.

The polling goes some way to explain why the Democratic candidates have been critical of each other over the weekend. Biden will be in trouble if he fails to do well in New Hampshire and his campaign released this saracastic ad on Saturday to highlight the differing levels of experince the two men have.

Biden leads in national polling in the democratic race, and would expect to do much better in some of the later primaries where he holds a wide lead among black Americans.

Warren is struggling too and after initially leading in some New Hampshire polls her support has now fallen away from the peaks it achieved. However, she has said she is undaunted and speaking to reporters after an event in Concord on Sunday, said: “There are 55 more states or territories after this. It looks like it’s going to be a long battle to the nomination.”

Updated

The president has continued with his early morning thoughts on the impeachment process … he might not have shaken her hand, but he just can’t stop thinking about Nancy Pelosi.

Ahead of his State of the Union address he told journalists that he believed New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will challenge - and beat - Senator Chuck Schumer for his Senate seat and win. However Schumer holds the seat until 2022 so Trump might have to wait a bit longer for that result.

While the Iowa caucuses still haven’t wrapped up yet, it looks like it might be some time before they get to the bottom of what has happened in what is being described as an “epic fiasco”.

This is an interesting read from the New York Times which among other things, suggests it is a deep rooted problem.

As disastrous as the 2020 Iowa caucuses have appeared to the public, the failure runs deeper and wider than has previously been known, according to dozens of interviews with those involved. It was a total system breakdown that casts doubt on how a critical contest on the American political calendar has been managed for years.

Donald Trump is due to present his $4.8 trillion budget proposal for the fiscal year 2021 later today, which includes plans to slash spending on foreign aid, social safety net programs like Medicaid, housing assistance and disability insurance and provide billions of additional dollars for a wall along the southern border.

Democrats are expected to object to the deep spending cuts in what is essentially a pre-election budget highlighting what Trump sees as his priorities as he seeks re-election. It will include $2 billion to fund further construction on a border wall with Mexico, a project that is especially popular with his political base, and funding for an infrastructure bill that is unlikely to be passed by Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

Trump is also planning to request a major boost to the country’s nuclear weapons arsenal in order to modernize the stockpile for the future, reports Axios.

The New York Times reports that Trump’s budget is expected to reinforce the anti-immigration platform that helped propel him into office.

The White House plans to unveil the budget blueprint at 12:30 pm eastern time, but before the budget plans are announced, and ahead of Trump’s visit to Manchester, New Hampshire later this evening, he has been tweeting about the Democrats and last week’s impeachment trial. Seems like he’s looking forward to his rally later too.

Updated

Good morning and welcome to today’s liveblog.

With one more day until what could be a make or break vote for some of the Democratic candidates in the New Hampshire primary, many of them spent the weekend stepping up their attacks on one another.

Former vice-president Joe Biden’s poor performance in Iowa has left him under pressure to revive his campaign, and he began his fight back saying Bernie Sanders’ democratic socialism would turn off voters in moderate states. He also was critical of Pete Buttigieg, questioning whether the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana had enough experience to lead the party.

Meanwhile it seems that Buttigieg’s strong showing in Iowa has made him the main target for the other candidates’ attacks.

Sanders accused him of taking contributions from the very wealthy and asked if he will stand up to Wall Street tycoons or the “corporate elite”, while Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren voiced similar concerns on ABC’s This Week. She said that “the coalition of billionaires is not exactly what’s going to carry us over the top”. Biden told the same program that Buttigieg hasn’t been able to “unify the black community”.

Buttigieg later acknowledged he was doing well and addressed some of the criticisms while campaigning in New Hampshire. “We are the campaign with the strongest momentum in the state of New Hampshire, thanks to you,” he told a crowd of several hundred in Dover, while at an earlier event in Nashua, he said: “Let’s remember we’re facing the most divisive president of our time, which is why we can’t risk dividing Americans further.”

While most of the candidates will be out campaigning across New Hampshire today, it emerged that Sanders’ campaign plans to ask for a “partial recanvass” of the results of last week’s chaotic Iowa caucuses.

A campaign aide confirmed the plans on Sunday night, ahead of a Monday deadline for candidates to ask the Iowa Democratic party to recanvass the results. A recanvass is not a recount, but a check of the vote count to ensure the results were added correctly. You can read more about that here.

We’ll be keeping an eye on that and also some of the other key events happening today including;

  • Trump is offering a $4.8tn election-year budget plan that recycles previously rejected cuts to domestic programs to promise a balanced budget in 15 years all while boosting the military and leaving Social Security and Medicare benefits untouched. That is due at 8am ET.
  • Later on the president will be holding a Keep America Great Rally in Manchester, New Hampshire at 7pm ET.

Updated

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