GOP candidates’ in-person events cancelled amid winter blast

(NewsNation) — The unrelenting weather in Iowa is once again forcing some presidential hopefuls to cancel their campaign events. With just three days to go until the Iowa caucuses, another massive winter storm could prevent candidates from using these crucial last days to campaign.

Late Thursday night, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley‘s campaign decided to cancel all in-person events today due to “potentially dangerous weather conditions.” Instead, she will be hosting telephone town halls with voters.

Haley’s other competitors are moving forward with some of their events. Trump has called on Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake to campaign on his behalf at a surrogate event Friday. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy has four stops scheduled throughout the day. DeSantis attended his first event Friday, but his PAC canceled his next two and said events in Pella and Cralville scheduled for later in the day were on for now.

Haley pleaded with Iowa residents during her Cedar Rapids town hall to brave the cold and show up to vote.

“I know it’s going to be negative 15 on Monday. I don’t even know what that is. I literally can’t comprehend it. It’s going to be negative 15. But I’m going to be out there and I want you to go out there,” Haley said.

According to the latest Suffolk University poll, Haley surged past Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, leading him by nine points. This comes just days after the two were polling neck-and-neck.

Regardless, she’s still a distant second behind former President Donald Trump who has 54% support in Iowa.

Iowans claim they are used to snowy conditions, but the super cold temperatures could possibly inspire some of them to stay home on caucus day.

“It’s such an important caucus season this year. I expect a great turnout, but we just never know,” Iowa resident Alex Hull said. “We never know how much snow we’re actually going to get tomorrow, and then it’s going to get super cold Sunday and Monday.”

As of Friday morning, snow continued to pile up and temperatures have been predicted to drop to potentially record-breaking below-zero lows in the coming days.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Related articles

SignalGate Report Heads to Congress At Moment When GOP Is Feeling Not-So-Great About Our Secretary of War

Expressing Distress This week, Republicans in Congress are furrowing their brows very strongly about the Department of War’s approach to...

Pete Hegseth’s ‘worn out’ MAGA excuse is running out of steam: ex-White House insider



Pete Hegseth’s reliance on using a Donald Trump deflection as allegations of incompetence, criminality and Pentagon infighting continue to grow is starting to wear thin, according to one former Trump White House insider.

The embattled Secretary of Defense is fighting a war on two fronts this week as he fends off accusations of war crimes over the killing of two alleged drug boat survivors who were reportedly clinging to their boat after a U.S. military attack.

At the same time, a damning report from the Pentagon Inspector General (IG) stated that the Pentagon chief violated protocols with his use of the Signal app, which endangered U.S. troops during an assault on Houthi rebels.

According to a report from Jack Detsh of Politico, in order to fend off bad press and investigations into his conduct, the former Fox News personality has been taking a page out of Trump’s MAGA playbook, by criticizing the messenger and not addressing the issues head-on.

As Detch wrote, Hegseth’s strategy can be summed up as, “Attack your enemies, revamp your story and never say you got it wrong.”

Add to that, Hegseth has been quick to fall back on calling anything that portrays him in a bad light as “fake news.”

As the report notes, that may work for Trump, but it’s being overused by the Pentagon chief, who has already has a trust deficit with many less-than-supportive Republican lawmakers.

According to a former senior Trump adviser, “There’s only so many times that you can stand next to the president and label everything as fake news and deny everything. It’s worn out.”

The same official also claimed the strategy doesn’t work for the defense secretary because of his reputation.

“When he takes this approach of, ‘this is fake news,’ and then hits back with some type of a troll…that only reinforces his biggest liability, which is that he’s unqualified for the job,” they explained. “That just reinforces that he’s not serious.”

You can read more here.

They held an election but few came; final 2025 campaign financials

Decembers are usually a quiet period in local politics. ...