Welcome to 2020. The holidays are over and the barren wasteland of winter stretches ahead of us. But on the bright side, the Iowa caucuses are just 30 days away!
We were off last week and we have a lot to catch up on. Let’s get to it.
All eyes are on Iran
By far the biggest news this week — arguably the most consequential foreign policy news in years — was the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran’s top security and intelligence commander, on President Trump’s orders. The geopolitical and national security implications are immense, and you can read more about them here.
The killing also reoriented the Democratic presidential race, which had, until now, been focused mostly on domestic policy.
While the candidates were broadly united — most of them expressed alarm at the prospect of open war with Iran while also condemning General Suleimani, who had a long history of directing attacks against Americans — their statements revealed fault lines within the party over military force and the role the United States should play in the world.
Castro is out
Julián Castro, the former housing secretary, ended his presidential campaign on Thursday. “I’ve determined that it simply isn’t our time,” he said in a video message to supporters.
Mr. Castro was one of the first entrants into the primary, and he helped set the pace on policy even as he struggled in the polls. His plans on immigration, education and housing came early and included proposals that are now common in the Democratic field, including universal prekindergarten and decriminalizing unauthorized border crossings.
Money, money, money
As the calendar turned from 2019 to 2020, the fourth fiscal quarter also came to a close.
Only about half of the candidates had released their fund-raising numbers as of Friday, but the top-polling candidates are all in.
Here’s what we know so far:
The biggest takeaway is Mr. Sanders’s strength: $34.5 million is a monumental sum, more than any other Democratic candidate has raised in any quarter.
It’s also worth noting that the top four Democratic candidates raised a combined total of more than $100 million in the fourth quarter. By comparison, President Trump — who can draw contributions from pretty much the entire Republican Party, because he has no serious primary challengers — raised $46 million.
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Want more on what the fund-raising numbers mean? Two of our resident campaign finance experts, Shane Goldmacher and Thomas Kaplan, have you covered.
A doctored video of Biden
A video made the rounds online this week, purporting to show Mr. Biden making racist remarks. In reality, it had been deceptively clipped from a longer statement in which Mr. Biden criticized the culture of violence against women.
It was hard not to see the misleading video — which many people who oppose Mr. Biden, both Democrats and Republicans, quickly shared — as a sign of things to come. As Mr. Biden himself said in Iowa on Thursday, whichever candidate Democrats nominate will almost certainly face disinformation in the general election.
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In another viral moment — this one not taken out of context — Mr. Biden was asked on Monday whether he would consider choosing a Republican as his running mate. “The answer is I would, but I can’t think of one now,” he said at an event in Exeter, N.H. “There’s some really decent Republicans that are out there still, but here’s the problem right now of the well-known ones: They’ve got to step up.”
An update on Sanders’s health
Early this week, Mr. Sanders released three letters from doctors declaring him healthy, nearly three months after he had a heart attack while campaigning in Las Vegas. One of the letters said that Mr. Sanders, 78, no longer needed some medications relating to the attack.
That letter, dated Dec. 28 and signed by Dr. Brian P. Monahan, the attending physician of Congress, characterized Mr. Sanders as “in good health currently.”
Warren’s disability rights plan
Ms. Warren released a proposal on Thursday to expand rights for people with disabilities, some of whom helped develop the plan.
Among other things, the proposal would bar employers from paying disabled workers less than the minimum wage, eliminate rules that can cause people to lose government disability payments if they marry, remove waiting periods for Social Security disability insurance, and provide funding to make polling stations and public schools accessible.
Ms. Warren also pledged to recruit more people with disabilities for federal jobs, internships and contracts; make it easier for people with disabilities to file workplace and housing discrimination complaints; and add an administrator at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to “coordinate and expand the bureau’s existing services for people with disabilities.”
In other policy news:
And finally …
Nostalgia was everywhere last week, and we weren’t immune. Take a minute to look back with us …
… and then on to 2020.