Hogan announces senate bid as Trump sweeps all Nevada delegates: Live

Super Tuesday, the biggest day of the US presidential primary season, arrives early next month and promises to have a decisive if perhaps somewhat anticlimactic impact on the respective Republican and Democratic races.

All but one of his challengers have fallen away, leaving only the well-funded but under-performing ex-UN ambassador Nikki Haley still swinging.

But even she may not make it to Super Tuesday (although she has promised she will), as the next Republican primary takes place in her home state of South Carolina and current polling indicates the Palmetto State’s former governor could be in for another trouncing on her home turf, a further humiliation after she scored fewer votes than the “none of these candidates” box on Nevada ballot papers.

“Is there any way we can call the election for next Tuesday?” a cocky Mr Trump gloated on stage in Las Vegas after that result.

“That’s all I want. I want to call the election for next Tuesday.”

However, if Ms Haley can somehow conjure a surprise victory in either South Carolina on 24 February or Michigan on 27 February, it will be game on for Super Tuesday and we could find ourselves with a very interesting evening indeed.

The Democratic contest is looking equally one-sided, with President Joe Biden seemingly nailed-on to be his party’s candidate again as he seeks a second term in the White House, despite concerns about his advanced age and consistently poor polling.

Here’s Gustaf Kilander on how the former president’s friendship with the Republican National Committee chair finally fell apart despite years of dogged lapdog obedience on her part.

Despite a disastrous result in the Nevada primary this week where she was beaten by “None of these candidates” in a race in which Donald Trump did not participate, Nikki Haley continues to lay into the former president and current occupant of the Oval Office, Joe Biden, over their respective ages.

The former UN ambassador is focusing all of her energy on her home state of South Carolina where she served as governor for two terms, and has vowed to stay in the race for the Republican Party presidential nomination even after Tuesday’s embarrassing outcome in the Silver State.

Her campaign pitch against both Trump and President Biden is that they are both too old to lead the country, aged 77 and 81 respectively, and that it is time for generational change.

Oliver O’Connell has this one.

For Independent Premium, Jon Sopel looks at a week of unforced errors from the president and reports that Democrats are still quietly hoping a replacement candidate will emerge to run in his place.

A jubilant Donald Trump told a crowd of supporters in Las Vegas on Thursday night that he wants the election held next week after he claimed another caucus victory in Nevada.

Appearing onstage at the Treasure Island Hotel and Casino he said: “Is there any way we can call the election for next Tuesday? That’s all I want. I want to call the election for next Tuesday.”

The former president also gloated about rival Republican candidate Nikki Haley losing to “none of these candidates” in the state’s primary earlier in the week.

As we saw earlier, Trump got confused about the days of the week in his remarks, saying that the primary was “last night” when it was actually on Tuesday.

“And last night, and you know what happened last night, none of the above,” he said.

“I would like to congratulate none of the above. I was one of those none of ever aboves, and they won by 44 points.”

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley released a statement about the special counsel’s report on X yesterday, calling out what she felt was a double standard:

Here’s Eric Garcia, Andrew Feinberg and Alex Woodward to explain why Biden was not charged for holding onto classified documents but Trump was.

An angry and animated President Joe Biden hit back at a Republican prosecutor’s claim that his memory is faulty in last-minute remarks to reporters on Thursday.

Earlier in the day, the Department of Justice released a report by special counsel Robert Hur, the former Maryland US attorney that attorney general Merrick Garland charged with probing how classified documents ended up at Biden’s home in Delaware and former office in Washington.

Hur did not recommend that Biden face criminal charges, citing what he described as significant “mitigating factors” that led him to state that charges were not warranted and would not have been warranted even if Biden were not president and barred from being prosecuted by Department of Justice policy.

More contentiously, the Republican prosecutor noted that Biden’s memory about the documents was “significantly limited” during his interviews with investigators and included details in the report about Biden’s presentation during interviews that appeared tailor-made to fit claims by former president Donald Trump and his allies that the president is not mentally competent.

At one point, he claimed that Biden did not remember what year his late son, Beau Biden, had died from brain cancer, and he described part of an interview in which the president, in his telling, had trouble keeping track of the years during which he served as vice president.

Responding, the president was having none of it.

Here’s Andrew Feinberg’s report.

The self-help guru has announced she is ending her long-shot run to unseat Joe Biden from the Democratic nomination, which comes as not a huge surprise after she was only able to chalk up two lacklustre primary performances at great expense.

Here she is signing out in typically idiosyncratic fashion.

Here’s more on her exit.

Trump may be the current 2024 Republican frontrunner but his mounting legal problems are threatening his chance of even appearing on the presidential election ballot in some states.

Political activists and government watchdog organisations have pushed for states to bar the former president from being an option for voters by invoking a little-known provision of the 14th Amendment.

Section 3 of the amendment prohibits those who take part in insurrections or who aided enemies of the United States government from taking office and the Supreme Court convened on Thursday to hear arguments raised by the states of Colorado and Maine that it should be used to block Trump from running in 2024 in light of the Capitol riot.

John Bowden and Ariana Baio take a look at the amendment and its significance today.