“Cascading failures.” A highly anticipated US Justice Department report on the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, said some of the 21 children and teachers who were killed may have survived if officers had followed ‘accepted practices.’ US Attorney General Merrick Garland laid out the timeline of the delayed response.
Published On 18 Jan 2024
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The drill will involve about 90,000 personnel and rehearse NATO’s execution of its regional defence plans.
NATO will launch its largest exercise since the Cold War next week with about 90,000 personnel set to take part in the months-long wargames, the alliance’s top commander General Chris Cavoli has said.
Cavoli said on Thursday that the drills would rehearse NATO’s execution of its regional plans, the first defence plans the alliance has drawn up in decades, detailing how it would respond to a Russian attack.
NATO did not mention Russia by name in its announcement. But its top strategic document identifies Moscow as the most significant and direct threat to member states.
The alliance also said that taking part will be more than 50 ships, from aircraft carriers to destroyers; more than 80 fighter jets, helicopters and drones; and at least 1,100 combat vehicles, including 133 tanks and 533 infantry fighting vehicles.
“Steadfast Defender 2024 will demonstrate NATO’s ability to rapidly deploy forces from North America and other parts of the alliance to reinforce the defence of Europe,” NATO said.
The wargames will contain a “simulated emerging conflict scenario with a near-peer adversary”, Cavoli told reporters in Brussels after a two-day meeting of national chiefs of defence.
During the second part of the Steadfast Defender exercise, the focus will be on deploying NATO’s quick reaction force to Poland.
The games are expected to last until the end of May.
Cavoli said the drills will demonstrate “our unity, our strength, and our determination to protect each other”.
The Baltic states, which are seen as most at risk from a potential Russian attack, will be another location of the drills.
Germany will also be a location because it is a hub for incoming reinforcement and countries on the fringes of the alliance, including Norway and Romania.
The troops taking part in the exercises will come from NATO countries and Sweden, which hopes to join the alliance soon.
At the 2023 NATO summit held in Vilnius, Lithuania, allies signed off on regional plans that ended a long era of the military bloc no longer seeing a need for large-scale defence plans, as wars were focused in the Middle East or Afghanistan.
The bloc previously felt confident that there was no longer a threat from Russia.
The last exercises of a similar scale were the Reforger drills during the Cold War in 1988 with 125,000 participants and the Trident Juncture ones in 2018 with 50,000 participants, according to NATO.
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On fourth day of strikes, the US military says it targeted 14 Houthi missiles that were ‘loaded to be fired’ from Yemen.
The United States military says its forces launched strikes on 14 Houthi missiles “that were loaded to be fired” from Yemen in the fourth day of direct attacks on the Iran-aligned group in less than a week.
The missiles posed a threat to commercial ships and US Navy vessels in the region, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said on Wednesday.
The group, which controls most of Yemen and has been attacking ships in the region since November, said it will not stop its strikes on shipping routes despite increasing assaults by the US military.
“We will not give up targeting Israeli ships or ships heading towards ports in occupied Palestine … in support of the Palestinian people,” the group’s spokesperson, Mohammed Abdelsalam, told Al Jazeera on Thursday.
“These missiles on launch rails … could have been fired at any time, prompting U.S. forces to exercise their inherent right and obligation to defend themselves,” CENTCOM said on X.
The strikes are meant to degrade the Houthis’ “capabilities to continue their reckless attacks on international and commercial shipping in the Red Sea, the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, and the Gulf of Aden”, it added.
U.S. CENTCOM Strikes Houthi Terrorist Missile Launchers
In the context of ongoing multi-national efforts to protect freedom of navigation and prevent attacks on U.S. and partner maritime traffic in the Red Sea, on Jan. 17 at approximately 11:59 p.m. (Sanaa time), U.S. Central… pic.twitter.com/MMCQbzr1f7
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) January 18, 2024
The Houthi-controlled Saba news agency said the US and the United Kingdom launched the strikes in the provinces of Hodeidah, Taiz, Dhamar, al-Bayda and Saada overnight. However, CENTCOM did not mention any involvement of the UK in the latest attacks.
“It is an open war, and they must endure the earth-shattering, powerful, and crushing strikes and responses, God willing,” Houthi official Ali al-Qahoum wrote on X after the latest strikes.
The US on Wednesday redesignated the Yemeni group as a “terrorist” organisation in response to its continuing attacks and threats to shipping and imposed sanctions on it. The designation does not go into effect for 30 days.
The Houthis said the designation will not affect its operations to prevent Israeli ships or vessels heading to Israel from crossing the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.
Rights advocates and analysts say the US move may negatively affect Yemeni civilians.
The Houthis, who support the Palestinian armed group Hamas, launched their attacks in response to Israel’s war on Gaza. Their strikes have slowed trade between Asia and Europe and alarmed major world powers.
Earlier on Wednesday, CENTCOM said a drone launched from areas controlled by the Houthi rebels in Yemen struck the US-owned ship Genco Picardy in the Gulf of Aden. It inflicted some damage, but no injuries, it said.
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It was one of Joe Biden’s first major foreign policy decisions.
Less than a month after taking office in January 2021, the United States president lifted two “terrorist” designations imposed by his predecessor, Donald Trump, against Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
At the time, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the move came in “recognition of the dire humanitarian situation in Yemen”. The United Nations, as well as humanitarian groups and US lawmakers, had warned the “terrorist” designations could interrupt the flow of aid to the country.
Now, almost exactly three years later, the Biden administration is reimposing one of the designations against the Houthis, declaring them to be a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist group” amid a series of attacks in the Red Sea.
And once again, rights advocates and political analysts are sounding the alarm over the negative effects the decision may have on Yemeni civilians. Many also question whether Wednesday’s designation will succeed in pushing the Houthis to end their attacks.
“I’m very concerned about the devastating consequences for ordinary people in Yemen,” said Afrah Nasser, a non-resident fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC who previously worked as a Yemen researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Nasser told Al Jazeera that the designation risks deepening the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, which has experienced a years-long war between the Houthis and a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
More than half of the Yemeni population — 18.2 million people — is in need of assistance, according to the UN, as the country reels from an economic crisis, rising costs, mass displacement and hunger.
“The ordinary Yemeni family today is suffering because of both the Houthi domestic policies and also the international community policies in Yemen, such as this [US] designation that we heard today,” Nasser said. “Yemenis are caught between two fires.”
In a statement on Wednesday morning, Blinken said the “Specially Designated Global Terrorist group” designation (SDGT) came in response to Houthi attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
“This designation seeks to promote accountability for the group’s terrorist activities. If the Houthis cease their attacks in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, the United States will reevaluate this designation,” the top US diplomat said.
The Iran-aligned Houthis, who control large swaths of Yemen, began firing missiles at Israel and attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea shortly after the war in Gaza began in October.
The group pledged to target Israel-linked vessels as part of an effort to pressure the country’s government to end its Gaza bombardment and allow more humanitarian aid deliveries into the coastal Palestinian enclave. It later expanded the threat to any commercial vessels travelling to and from Israel along the arterial trade route off Yemen’s coast.
The attacks led shipping companies to suspend operations in the Red Sea and drew condemnation from the US and its allies.
Washington launched a naval coalition to protect commercial vessels in December, and it also carried out several strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen this month in what observers called a “dangerous” escalation.
On Wednesday, the Biden administration defended its decision to reimpose the SDGT designation on the Houthis, saying there would be “carve-outs” to protect aid to Yemen.
“Today’s designation targets the Houthis, not the Yemeni people,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said in a press conference.
When asked about how any related sanctions would impact negotiations with the Houthis, Kirby responded firmly: “There’s no negotiations. There’s not a bargaining chip. It’s a way of holding the Houthis accountable.”
But experts cast doubt on whether the SDGT designation would lead the Houthis to stop their attacks in the Red Sea, as the administration suggested.
“It seems highly unlikely to have any positive effect on the behaviour of the Houthis,” said Brian Finucane, a senior US programme adviser at the International Crisis Group think tank.
“I think it’s a form of do-something-ism,” he told Al Jazeera. The reimposition of the SDGT designation, he added, is a reflection of Washington’s refusal to recognise that recent Houthi attacks are linked to the war in Gaza.
“The Biden administration has put itself in a box … where it doesn’t have good policy options.”
An SDGT designation focuses primarily on the finances of an individual or a group. In this case, it will freeze the Houthis’ assets in the US and prohibit American citizens from having any financial dealings with the organisation.
And while “civil and criminal penalties may be assessed for violations”, the designation is more narrow in scope than the second label that the Trump administration had imposed on the Houthis: that of “Foreign Terrorist Organization” or FTO.
That label makes it a serious crime to provide support to a blacklisted group.
“This [SDGT designation] is sort of a minimal: restricting access to funds from abroad, access to international markets. These are things that Houthis don’t have and never had. They don’t own stock on the New York Stock Exchange,” said Nabeel Khoury, a former deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Yemen.
Nevertheless, Khoury told Al Jazeera that the Houthis are unlikely to make a distinction between an SDGT or FTO designation and will see Wednesday’s decision as an affront that could lead to further escalation.
Hours after the designation was announced, the Houthis said they fired “naval missiles” at an American ship in the Gulf of Aden. There was no immediate confirmation from Washington.
“It’s really baffling what this administration is engaged in. I don’t think there’s much thought that went into this,” he said. “This designation is more like an insult. It’s the old glove in the face, slap someone with your glove. You’re sort of challenging, but not really hurting them.”
Nasser also warned that it could further embolden the Houthis and “contribute in radicalising some parts of the population and strengthen the Houthi recruitment system”.
Yet, while the SDGT designation is “narrower” than an FTO, the Biden administration is aware “that these sanctions could make things worse for the people of Yemen”, said Finucane.
That’s because financial institutions and humanitarian organisations “are likely to be very cautious about engaging with the Houthis in Yemen”, particularly until clear rules around the redesignation are laid out, Finucane explained.
On Wednesday, the Biden administration said it is “taking significant steps to mitigate any adverse impacts this designation may have on the people of Yemen”. The decision will come into effect in 30 days, Blinken’s statement said, during which time the administration will consult with aid organisations and other stakeholders.
The US Department of Treasury also is expected to publish licenses “authorizing certain transactions related to the provision of food, medicine, and fuel, as well as personal remittances, telecommunications and mail, and port and airport operations on which the Yemeni people rely”.
An SDGT designation is doing something to do something. Like an FTO designation, it’s toothless and won’t have any desired effect. Where the FTO would have ushered in a certain catastrophe, an SDGT carries only a severe risk of catastrophe.
— Scott Paul (@ScottTPaul) January 16, 2024
But that hasn’t dampened fears the designation will affect Yemenis negatively.
“This designation would add another level of uncertainty and threat for Yemenis still caught in one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises,” Scott Paul, associate director of peace and security at Oxfam America, told Al Jazeera in a written statement.
“The Biden administration is playing with fire, and we call on them to avoid this designation immediately and prioritise the lives of Yemenis now.”
With files from Al Jazeera’s Ali Harb in Washington, DC.
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Houthi spokesperson says designation would not affect the group’s attacks on ships it says are linked to Israel.
The United States government has announced it is once again designating Yemen’s Houthi rebels as a “terrorist” organisation.
Washington’s move on Wednesday to relist the group as “specially designated global terrorists” comes after the US launched strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen in response to the rebels’ attacks on vessels in the Red Sea.
These attacks by the Iran-allied group since November have disrupted maritime trade between Asia and Europe.
The Houthis say their attacks are aimed at ships with links to Israel and they will continue attacking targets until Israel’s war on Gaza stops.
“In response to these continuing threats and attacks, the United States announced the designation of Ansarallah, also known as the Houthis, as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in statement.
“This designation is an important tool to impede terrorist funding to the Houthis, further restrict their access to financial markets, and hold them accountable for their actions.”
The designation does not take effect for 30 days, US officials said.
“If the Houthis cease their attacks in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, the United States will immediately reevaluate this designation,” Sullivan said.
Speaking after the announcement, Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam said the designation would not affect the group’s operations to prevent Israeli ships or ships heading to Israel from crossing the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.
The group will “not back down in its position in support of the Palestinian people”, he told Al Jazeera.
The US is designating Yemen’s Houthis as a “terrorist” group. Who are they? @SandraGathmann explains ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/CBDzR78aLG
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) January 17, 2024
The US previously designated the Houthis as a “foreign terrorist organisation” under former President Donald Trump’s administration despite strong objections from human rights and humanitarian aid groups.
In February 2021, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken delisted the Houthis as both a “foreign terrorist organisation” and as “specially designated global terrorists” as the administration of current US President Joe Biden sought to make it easier to get humanitarian aid into Yemen.
The designation is being reinstated “to make sure international commerce is protected”, Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett said, reporting from Washington, DC.
“It will trigger sanctions for anyone or any state or entity that now tries to provide material support for the Houthis. We know that they are an Iranian-backed group, so Iran, for example, could be now subject to more sanctions. It means that members of the Houthi group would be banned from entering the United States and any Houthi funds that are in US financial institutions would be frozen,” she added.
US officials said they would design the financial penalties to minimise harm to Yemen’s 32 million people, who are among the world’s poorest and hungriest after years of war between the Houthis and a Saudi-led coalition that supports Yemen’s internationally recognised government.
“The people of Yemen should not pay the price for the actions of the Houthis,” Sullivan’s statement said. “We are sending a clear message: commercial shipments into Yemeni ports on which the Yemeni people rely for food, medicine and fuel should continue and are not covered by our sanctions.”
In a statement, Blinken added: “During the 30-day implementation delay, the US government will conduct robust outreach to stakeholders, aid providers, and partners who are crucial to facilitating humanitarian assistance and the commercial import of critical commodities in Yemen.”
However, aid officials have expressed concern. The decision would add “another level of uncertainty and threat for Yemenis still caught in one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises”, Oxfam America Associate Director Scott Paul said.
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Around 150 people were arrested after a sit-in protest inside the US Congress calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Members of the group Mennonite Action sang songs and hymns as they called for peace and justice.
Published On 17 Jan 2024
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Mohammed Nazir Bin Lep and Mohammed Farik Bin Amin agreed to give evidence against alleged mastermind Hambali.
Malaysians Mohammed Nazir Bin Lep and Mohammed Farik Bin Amin have pleaded guilty to conspiring in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed more than 200 people.
The two men appeared in front of a military court at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay on Tuesday in proceedings broadcast via video link to reporters in the United States.
Bin Lep, 47, and Bin Amin, 48, pleaded guilty to five of the nine charges against them, according to Benar News, marking the first time they had entered a plea since they were brought to Guantanamo some 17 years ago.
Charges related to the 2003 attack on the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta that killed 11 people were dropped as part of a plea deal, according to The New York Times, and the men agreed to give evidence against alleged Indonesian mastermind Encep Nurjaman, also known as Hambali.
Bin Lep and Bin Amin were accused of being Hambali’s accomplices and charged alongside him, but their cases were separated last year.
The Malaysians will be sentenced next week, after which they are expected to be returned home.
Hambali, who was once described by former US President George W Bush as “one of the world’s most lethal terrorists”, is still to go on trial.
Through his lawyers, Hambali has alleged that he was brutally tortured following his arrest in Thailand in 2003, after which he says he was transferred to a secret detention camp run by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and tortured as part of the agency’s rendition, detention and interrogation (RDI) programme, which is sometimes referred to as the “torture programme”.
The attacks on the Bali clubs in October 2002 were the worst in Indonesian history and led to a crackdown on hardline groups such as Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), and a strengthening of Jakarta’s counterterrorism operations.
Three of the main perpetrators of the bombings were sentenced to death and executed in 2008, while a fourth, Ali Imron, was jailed for life after he apologised and expressed remorse for what he had done.
In 2022, Indonesia jailed Zulkarnaen, a senior member of JI who had been on the run for 20 years, to 15 years in prison over the attacks.
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Washington, DC – When your children ask you what you did during the war in Gaza, what will you say?
That’s how one federal government employee in the United States described her motivation for organising her colleagues around a “day of mourning” on Tuesday to recognise more than 100 days of war in the Palestinian enclave.
She and a group of federal workers, acting anonymously under the name Feds United for Peace, agreed to take leave from their jobs en masse, in an demonstration against the rising death toll in Gaza and the US’s role in the war.
The move is the latest underscoring the discontent within President Joe Biden’s administration. Biden has voiced “rock-solid and unwavering” support for Israel, despite mounting human rights concerns over its months-long military campaign in Gaza.
More than 24,200 Palestinians have been killed in the fighting, and nearly 1.9 million displaced.
“When your kids ask you, ‘What did you do?’, we don’t want to say that we just watched from the sidelines. And we hope that everyone who has a conscience looks at this situation and takes it upon themselves to not watch from the sidelines,” said the organiser, who added that she had more than 15 years of experience in the federal government.
She and a second organiser spoke to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity for fear of professional repercussions. They said the group represents employees — both career professionals and political appointees — across 27 government agencies, including the White House and Congress.
“We are really not activists. There may be, among our group, people who are political appointees, but we’re not political in any way,” said the second organiser.
“This group really grows out of this immense frustration and sadness at seeing the war continue for so long — the massive death and destruction unfolding in Gaza over the last 100 days,” he said.
Members of the Biden administration have repeatedly voiced frustration with the president’s stance and called for a ceasefire in Gaza, including through public statements and open letters.
There have even been high-profile resignations. State Department official Josh Paul left his post over Biden’s handling of the war, as did Tariq Habash in the Department of Education.
Habash had been the department’s only Palestinian American political appointee at the time of his departure. He later told Al Jazeera that leaving was “the only thing” he could do in the face of a US policy that has had a “near-daily dehumanising effect” on Palestinians.
Nevertheless, Washington continues to provide military aid to Israel, without setting “red lines” to limit its use. An estimated $3.8bn is earmarked annually for the country, with Biden bypassing Congress twice last month to approve further sales of weaponry.
The Biden administration has recently called on the Israeli government to shift towards more targeted operations with fewer civilian casualties, but Palestinian American advocates have said those words ring hollow without more decisive action.
Biden also provoked the ire of Palestinian rights supporters after he questioned the death toll provided by authorities in Gaza.
That is why the latest move by federal employees “is not something that is coming out of the blue”, said Jasmine El-Gamal, a foreign policy analyst and former Middle East adviser at the Pentagon.
“We’ve seen months now of federal employees, both in the executive branch and the legislative branch, trying to bring attention to the fact that there is a huge level of dissent within the Biden administration and from people working on Biden’s campaign as well, against his policies when it comes to Gaza,” El-Gamal told Al Jazeera.
Critics said Biden’s statement on Sunday to mark the 100th day of the war echoed a pattern of dehumanisation towards Palestinians.
The US president decried the “devastating and tragic milestone” for those held captive by Hamas, the group that attacked southern Israel on October 7, killing an estimated 1,139 Israelis and kidnapping hundreds more.
But Biden made no mention of the profound death toll in Gaza and the ongoing humanitarian crisis there. United Nations experts have warned of a “grave risk of genocide” in the territory.
Those human rights concerns have led to an “extremely uncommon, if not unprecedented”, level of dissent within the Biden administration, according to Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
“We have seen nothing like this,” Parsi said. He explained it took years for members of other administrations to organise in protest of their president. “Even during the Iraq war, for instance — not just in the beginning but also after — more and more lawmakers started to express concerns and opposition by 2004, 2005.”
While members of the Democratic Party in Congress remain predominantly pro-Israel, some have come forward to demand a ceasefire and push for more oversight over weapons transfers to Israel.
At least 63 members of Congress have called for an outright halt to the fighting. On Tuesday, progressive Senator Bernie Sanders introduced legislation that would require the US to conduct a human rights review of Israel before any more arms were transferred.
The dismay over the administration’s policies has also resulted in a potentially damaging political fallout for Biden on the campaign trail, as he seeks reelection in 2024.
The Democrat’s support among Arab and Muslim voters has plummeted to an all-time low, according to a poll conducted in October. Biden is widely expected to face former President Donald Trump in a general election in November.
“One of the critical qualities that Biden, frankly any Democrat, had immediately over Trump was to have the moral upper hand in the eyes of many of those in his own base,” Parsi said.
“Biden has squandered that by supporting a slaughter in Gaza, refusing to listen and even spreading misinformation about it.”
But for those seeking to send a message to Biden from within his administration, the stakes are high.
Following a report on Feds United for Peace’s planned action last week on the Al-Monitor website, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, tweeted: “Any government worker who walks off the job to protest US support for our ally Israel is ignoring their responsibility and abusing the trust of taxpayers.”
“They deserve to be fired,” he wrote, adding he would “work to ensure that each federal agency initiates appropriate disciplinary proceedings against any person who walks out on their job”.
One of the organisers for Feds United for Peace told Al Jazeera: “As a federal workforce, we are prohibited by law from striking, and so this action was never a strike.”
“It was never designed as a walkout. It was designed as a day of mourning. And employees took different types of leave for this day of mourning and used it in different ways,” she said, adding that watching the “horrors unfold” in Gaza “has taken a tremendous toll on people who care about what’s going on”.
“This was also an opportunity for people to just take a day and take care of themselves in order to continue their work and the struggle,” she said.
“Even though we are trying to protect ourselves, I think each one of us recognises that we’re putting our livelihoods at risk,” said the second organiser. While the organiser did not say how many were participating in the walkout, he did say that participation “has exceeded expectations”.
Many, however, are keeping a low profile, “as a result of perceived intimidation”.
The group is appealing for the Biden administration to support an immediate ceasefire, stop undermining international efforts to hold Israel accountable, prioritise the entry of humanitarian goods into Gaza and help facilitate the release of captives.
“We went into public service to serve the United States, to try to reflect what is best about the United States,” said the first organiser. “And so in this particular case, we feel it is a moral obligation and a patriotic duty to our country to use the means at our disposal to try to urge a course change in the White House policy.”
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“Never going to happen.”
That’s how New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu responded early last year to the prospect of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) stripping his state of its first-in-the-nation presidential primary.
For more than 100 years, New Hampshire has held the first primary contest in the United States, giving state voters a hefty voice in the process through which candidates ultimately receive their party nomination.
It was such a source of pride that the state even enshrined its earliest-primary status in its laws.
But the Democratic Party, at the urging of President Joe Biden, was under pressure to rearrange its primary calendar and move forward states that better reflect US demographics.
So in February 2023, the DNC demoted the rural, largely white New Hampshire to second on its primary calendar, behind South Carolina, despite the state’s objections.
Now, as the primary season kicks off on January 23, the Democratic primary in New Hampshire is set to be a showdown — between state and national party officials as much as between the candidates themselves.
The state has refused to relinquish its top primary spot, and in response, the DNC has stripped the primary of its delegates, rendering it purely symbolic. Biden, who likely faces a tight reelection race in 2024, will also not appear on the New Hampshire ballot.
But why does going first matter? And with this year’s primary contests widely expected to confirm Biden as the Democratic nominee, will the brouhaha in New Hampshire have any effect?
Liz Tentarelli, the president of the League of Women Voters New Hampshire, a non-partisan group, likens the state’s primaries to when “the circus comes to town”.
National media arrive in droves, and candidates crisscross the state, an area of just over 24,000sq km (9,300sq miles). Many presidential hopefuls hold small, in-person town halls and meet-and-greets, allowing some of the state’s 1.3 million residents to engage directly with candidates.
“Voting is a point of pride in New Hampshire,” said Tentarelli, a resident of the small town of Newbury, about 50km (30 miles) northwest of the state capital, Concord. Holding the first primary, she explained, is “a big deal”.
“I think it reflects that New Hampshire is the state that’s aware of politics more than some other states,” she told Al Jazeera, pointing to historically high voter turnout in primary and general elections.
“We’re also a small state that makes it easy for candidates who are not massively funded to campaign in the state. They can get around to different towns and hold these events, and the people turn out.”
According to Andrew Smith, a political science professor and president of the University of New Hampshire’s (UNH) Survey Center, holding the first primary is first and foremost “important culturally and historically to the state”.
“It’s what people from New Hampshire are known for,” he told Al Jazeera. “We never set out to have the first primary. It kind of happened by accident.”
To save money, the state’s early primaries were initially scheduled to coincide with Town Meeting Day, an occasion for community gatherings. New Hampshire held its first presidential primary in 1916, but it was four years later, in 1920, that the state began its first-in-the-nation tradition.
Since then, Smith said, New Hampshire residents have been willing to “fight” to keep their state’s first-place status.
However, the 2024 primaries have been more muted than in past years, said Tentarelli.
That’s in large part because political observers expect this year’s presidential race to come down to a rematch between Biden and former President Donald Trump, who lost the 2020 election.
Unlike its Democratic counterpart, the Republican National Committee has retained its traditional primary calendar, which began with the Iowa caucuses on January 15 and continues with New Hampshire holding the inaugural primary.
Trump remains the frontrunner in the party’s race, with a solid lead both in New Hampshire and across the country. He also notched a decisive victory in the Iowa caucuses.
But one of his Republican rivals, former United Nations envoy Nikki Haley, has been gaining ground in New Hampshire in recent weeks, according to recent polls.
And on the Democratic side, Biden’s absence from New Hampshire’s primary ballot has highlighted tensions within the party itself. After the state’s row with the Democratic National Committee over the new primary calendar, Biden did not file paperwork to be on the ballot on January 23.
That schism was further underscored by a tense exchange between state officials and DNC representatives.
In a letter last week, obtained by Politico, the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee called the January 23 primary “detrimental”, “non-binding” and “meaningless” for Democrats.
The letter reiterated that New Hampshire’s vote could not be used to choose Democratic Party delegates, who represent the state in picking the party’s nominee for the general elections.
New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella responded on January 8, calling the DNC’s remarks “false, deceptive, and misleading”. He also warned that any attempt to discourage primary voters could constitute a violation of state law.
Biden has not campaigned in the state either, leaving long-shot Democratic candidates like author Marianne Williamson and Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips an opening to post higher-than-expected primary results.
Williamson and Phillips “have made some appearances, but they have not generated much interest this year because we know they’re long shots”, Tentarelli said. She added that, among Democratic voters, “there is a sense of annoyance, I think, that Biden is not on the ballot”.
Yet, despite the ongoing rift between state and national party officials, some top New Hampshire Democrats have backed a grassroots effort calling on voters to write in the president’s name on their primary ballots.
“While misguided DNC rules are leaving Joe Biden off the primary ballot here, New Hampshire Democrats and Democrat-leaning Independents overwhelmingly support Joe Biden and plan to write him in,” the website for the Granite State Write-In campaign reads.
Approximately 65 percent of the state’s likely Democratic primary voters said they planned to write in the president’s name, according to a mid-November poll by the UNH Survey Center.
“Support for Biden has declined since September, but no strong challenger has yet emerged,” the survey said, noting only 10 percent support for Phillips and 9 percent for Williamson.
Meanwhile, a December poll from the Saint Anselm College Survey Center showed that Biden would beat Trump by 10 percentage points in New Hampshire in a hypothetical general election.
The centre noted that Trump faces a “looming problem” in the state: Supporters of his Republican rivals Haley and Chris Christie, who recently dropped out, would rather back Biden than Trump if the pair face off.
The experts who spoke to Al Jazeera said that not taking part in the New Hampshire primary will have little effect on Biden’s ability to secure the Democratic nomination, or on his general election chances.
“I think by November, most voters will have forgotten the issue around the primary, and it’s a whole new ballgame,” said Tentarelli.
Raymond Buckley, the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, echoed that sentiment. He said he does not expect the primary tiff to affect the general election.
“We’re still going to be ready for November and have a great year,” Buckley told Al Jazeera. He added that, while Biden’s absence on the ballot was “disappointing”, Democrats are still hoping for a “robust turnout” in the New Hampshire primary.
When asked whether Biden would have to answer for his decision to forgo the New Hampshire primary in his general election campaign, Buckley said that is still “a ways away”.
“I’m sure there will be some brainstorming down there on what that message will be, and I look forward to hearing it,” he said.
Still, Dante Scala, a political science professor at UNH who has observed the state’s primaries for more than two decades, said that if he were a member of the Biden campaign, he would be trying to downplay expectations ahead of the January 23 primary vote.
That’s because an underwhelming showing could raise scrutiny over whether “there [is] something to the idea that the Democratic base is really not thrilled with Biden”.
“That’s been a story off and on for months,” he told Al Jazeera. “Like, ‘Boy, a lot of Democrats say Biden’s too old.’ A lot of Democrats say, ‘I wish we had other choices.’ And now we actually [will] see some results.”
New Hampshire’s importance does not lie in the number of delegates it wields, Scala pointed out. Out of the thousands of delegates slated to appear at the Democratic National Convention, New Hampshire will only send about 33.
But Scala explained that the New Hampshire primary does play a significant role in helping presidential candidates build or lose campaign steam.
“The importance of New Hampshire is we’re the stage on which the candidates audition. And they audition not just in front of us any more, but they audition in front of the whole nation,” he said.
For his part, Smith, the UNH political science professor, said the power of the New Hampshire primaries is largely linked to “the story that is told in the media about what happened”.
If “the story coming out of New Hampshire is that President Biden loses in New Hampshire or almost gets beat by an unknown congressman from Minnesota, well, that is going to be a very difficult narrative to turn around”, he said.
“Because we’re already seeing a significant number of Democrats in New Hampshire and across the country wish they had somebody else as their nominee, but they don’t.”
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Writer E Jean Carroll is accusing the former US president of defaming her in 2019 by denying he had attacked her in a department store dressing room.
Former US President Donald Trump has arrived in a New York courtroom to defend himself for a second time against charges that he defamed writer E Jean Carroll after she accused him of rape.
Trump, who has said he wants to testify at the civil trial, sat two tables behind Carroll, who is accusing him of defaming her in 2019 by denying he had attacked her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan.
Carroll, 80, is seeking at least $10m in damages.
US District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is overseeing the case, told prospective jurors on Tuesday that they would only have to consider how much Trump should pay Carroll in damages, not whether the alleged assault took place or whether Trump lied about it.
He added that the trial is expected to last three to five days.
Trump has cast himself as the victim of political persecution and said Kaplan should dismiss the case.
“Judge Kaplan should put this whole corrupt, Crooked Joe Biden-directed Election Interference attack on me immediately to rest,” he said on social media.
“He should do it for america.”
Trump has so far pleaded not guilty in four criminal cases that could potentially land him in prison before the November presidential election, including two that accuse him of trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
He is also the defendant in at least two other civil cases. But Trump has already lost one defamation case against Carroll.
In May last year, a jury ordered Trump to pay the former Elle columnist $5m for having sexually abused her during the encounter and defaming her.
Trump has said that he did not know Carroll and that she made up the encounter to sell her memoir. He is also appealing the $5m award.
Kaplan, who also presided over that case, said he has barred Trump from arguing that he did not defame or sexually assault Carroll or that she made up her account.
In recent weeks, Trump has ramped up his attacks on Carroll, including saying she did not know the decade of their encounter.
He also called Kaplan “terrible, biased, irrationally angry”.
Trump may face an uphill fight to escape significant additional damages because of Kaplan’s pre-trial rulings.
These include banning Trump from suggesting he did not rape Carroll, as New York’s penal law defines the term, because the first jury did not find that Trump committed rape.
Kaplan has ruled that because Trump used his fingers in the assault, Carroll’s rape claim was “substantially true.”
Trump also cannot discuss DNA evidence or Carroll’s sexual activities, or suggest that Democrats are bankrolling her case. Carroll is a Democrat.
And as happened at the first trial, jurors will be able to see the 2005 video from Access Hollywood video where Trump graphically described the ability of famous people like himself to have sexual relations with beautiful women.
Trump did not retract his comments when asked about them in a 2022 deposition. Kaplan has said the video could offer “useful insight into Mr. Trump’s state of mind” toward Carroll.
Trump lawyer Alina Habba on Sunday assured Kaplan that he was “well aware” of the court’s rulings “and the strict confines placed on his testimony”.
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