Nevada caucus election results: Haley brands primary a ‘scam’ as Trump set to claim all state delegates

President Joe Biden “wilfully” held on to classified materials that were discovered at his home in Delaware and the office of a think tank in Washington DC, but should not face criminal charges for doing so, a special prosecutor appointed by the attorney general found in a report released on Thursday.

The prosecutor, former Trump appointee and ex-Maryland US Attorney Robert Hur, did not recommend that Mr Biden face criminal charges, citing what he described as significant “mitigating factors” which led him to state that charges were not warranted and would not have been warranted even if Mr Biden were not president and barred from being prosecuted by Department of Justice policy.

In a statement, Mr Biden said he was “pleased” that Mr Hur decided that there would be no charges against him and said that was the outcome he’d been expecting “all along”.

James Lankford is having a bad week.

The senator from Oklahoma was once his party’s lead negotiator with the Democratic majority as his party sought a compromise on border security which led to a framework that included concessions the party previously never even dreamed of winning from their political rivals.

It wasn’t enough. As the legislation’s text was finally unveiled over last weekend, it became clear that a deal that once looked like it had a promising chance of passing the evenly divided upper chamber with 60 votes was going to fail, and fail spectacularly. The bill did so on Wednesday, with Mr Lankford, a handful of his GOP colleagues, and most of the chamber’s Democrats losing a procedural vote to begin debate on the legislation.

The bill’s fate came as little surprise: Donald Trump and his loyalists had come out against a compromise with Democrats, calling the legislation insufficient to manage the situation on the US-Mexico border and furious that Republicans would hand President Joe Biden another policy achievement to tout to voters this fall. Despite hemming and hawing from Republicans who denounced Mr Trump’s efforts to kill the legislation to help his campaign, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and virtually all of his conference voted down the legislation he had once urged senators to support.

And Mr Lankford is now at the centre of a firestorm on the right, hung out to dry by his party’s leaders in the upper chamber and the target of vitriol from hardline Trump loyalists.

Both Nikki Haley and Donald Trump, the only two prominent contenders remaining in the fight for their party’s nomination, are technically on the ballot in Nevada.

But they are on different ones — Ms Haley has already competed in the state’s primary, losing embarrassingly on Tuesday to “none of these candidates”, while Mr Trump is running in Thursday’s caucus, his sole remaining challenger being the obscure Texas pastor Ryan Binkley.

That means the front two will not actually be “against” each other in the Silver State because while Republican voters can choose to participate in both the primary and the caucus, the candidates cannot.

It is a bewildering system that has almost entirely sapped the state’s political relevance for the 2024 primary season.

Donald Trump is pushing a Nevada petition to include a voter ID amendment on the ballot in the state for the 5 November presidential election.

“This is a very ‘Big Deal’,” he wrote on Truth Social.

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday outlawed robocalls that contain voices generated by artificial intelligence, a decision that sends a clear message that exploiting the technology to scam people and mislead voters won’t be tolerated.

The unanimous ruling targets robocalls made with AI voice-cloning tools under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, a 1991 law restricting junk calls that use artificial and prerecorded voice messages.

The announcement comes as New Hampshire authorities are advancing their investigation into AI-generated robocalls that mimicked President Joe Biden’s voice to discourage people from voting in the state’s first-in-the-nation primary last month.

Oprah Winfrey, has announced that she is suspending her bid to challenge Joe Biden for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination after a disappointing start to primary season.

Ms Williamson, 71, had said she was determined to offer voters an alternative to a second term for President Biden, 81, but picked up only 5,000 votes in New Hampshire, and then just 2 per cent of the vote in South Carolina, and around 3 per cent in Nevada on Tuesday.

“I hope future candidates will take what works for them, drinking from the well of information we prepared,” she wrote as she announced the end of her campaign.

“My team and I brought to the table some great ideas, and I will take pleasure when I see them live on in campaigns and candidates yet to be created.”

Here’s something to bookmark going forward — our delegate tracker map for the Republican primaries.

Our map will be updated as the results of primaries or caucuses come in. You can scroll over the states in red to see how delegates have been allocated to each candidate so far.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Wednesday presented a $80.7 billion budget Wednesday that aims to boost education spending and deliver on her promise to provide students free education from preschool through community college.

The second-term Democratic governor unveiled her budget proposal in a joint session between the House and Senate appropriations committees. It follows a State of the State speech last month where Whitmer concentrated on initiatives such as free community college for all high school graduates, free preschool for 4-year-olds and continuing a free breakfast and lunch program for all students.

“My budget today will deliver on the vision I outlined a couple weeks ago,” Whitmer told lawmakers. “Lowering costs, improving education and ensuring that anyone and everyone can make it here in Michigan.”

The chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC) has told Trump that she’s planning on leaving her role after the South Carolina GOP primary on 24 February.

The front-runner is set to push for the chair of the North Carolina Republican Party, fellow election denier Michael Whatley, to replace her, according to The New York Times.

McDaniel has been under pressure for several months to step down as Trump’s allies have attempted to push her out amid concerns about the RNC’s finances ahead of the general election campaign.

After years of dogged loyalty on her part, her tenure looks send to end on a decidedly sour note.

Gustaf Kilander looks at what went wrong.

“And then Helmut Kohl turned to me and said, ‘What would you say, Mr President, if you picked up the London Times and learned that a thousand people had broken down the doors of the British Parliament, killed some bobbies on the way in, to deny the prime minister to take office,”’ Mr Biden said.

He echoed the blundering story at another event the same day.