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Evening Wrap

Your daily analysis of trending topics in state government. The snark is nonpartisan.

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A month in politics is a LIFETIME

We need to talk about New Hampshire, but first, we need to talk about abortion.

Kids!

I am fully primed to talk to you about kids, thanks to a week of school closures and many, many days with my own kids. Kids! They are why this introduction is short!

Weirdos

The strangeness of the system extends all the way to the primary process, which traditionally begins with presidential hopefuls flocking to the Iowa State Fair to consume piles of fried food while pretending to care about ethanol subsidies in hopes of winning the hearts and minds of white Midwesterners. Whoever survives that gantlet is rewarded with a trip to New Hampshire, where presidential aspirations live and die by one-on-one conversations with voters. So ingrained is this concept that there’s an adage Granite Staters invoke to explain whether they’ll support a given candidate.

A known mess

Case in point: Private equity firms buying up hospitals, saddling them with debt, using the proceeds to pay off wealthy investors and then selling the properties, leaving communities to deal with the remnants. This has been a thing for at least two decades, but it’s increased rapidly since 2012, both in spending and in scale. Private equity investors now own nearly 400 U.S. hospitals, accounting for roughly a third of the country’s for-profit facilities, Stateline reported.

Life in the circus

The results of Monday’s GOP caucuses were both historic and wholly predictable. As expected, Donald Trump triumphed, garnering 51% of the vote to finish 30 percentage points ahead of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. His margin of victory more than doubled the previous record of 12.8 percentage points, set by Bob Dole in 1988; likewise, his slim majority of voters was the highest-ever support for a single candidate in a competitive caucus. Collectively, the nation reacted with a yawn. By the numbers, it was an unprecedented showing. Politically, it’s just another day at the MAGA circus.

Well, that was a nail-biter, wasn't it?

Former President Donald Trump scored his first victory of the primary season with a mere 30-point drubbing of his nearest rivals in the Iowa Caucusesthe Iowa Capital Dispatch reports. Trump more than doubled the other candidates in the field – combined.

The legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

 Today is notable for two things: it is the day of the long-awaited Iowa Caucuses and it is a holiday in honor of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. We’ll have much to say about the caucuses tomorrow, once results are in (though check out our website this evening for full coverage from our veteran team on the ground in Iowa), so let’s talk about the legacy of America’s best-known civil rights leader.

Duh doy

 I was all set to send you into the weekend with a school-themed newsletter and a break from politics, right up until I remembered that, doy, everything is politics. Even schools. Maybe especially schools.

...Anyone?

Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley met alone on a debate stage for the first time Wednesday, offering undecided voters a clear glimpse of what a post-MAGA Republican Party might look like. What a moment! What an event! What an inaccurate description of what actually happened!

Primary problems

Consider the drama around the nominating process in Nevada, where Republicans are refusing to comply with a state law mandating a presidential primary contest, rather than a caucus, for major political parties with more than one candidate, the Nevada Current reported. The policy was proposed by Democrats after last-minute changes hampered vote tabulation during the 2020 caucuses, but it passed the legislature with a bipartisan majority.

Fallout

Nuclear testing began in July 1945, when the United States exploded an atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert. (American innovation!) From then until the adoption of a testing moratorium in 1992, the country conducted more than a thousand explosive nuclear tests. Most took place out west at remote locationsin states like Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, with at least one additional site in Mississippi. This — the rumble, the pyrotechnics — is the most visible legacy of the atomic bomb. But the effects of nuclear weapons stretch far beyond experiments and testing sites.

Over-everything

The newsletter theme of 2024 (one entire week in!) has been politics, which is great, because I am never not pondering the state of politics and I am also never not wanting to share my pondering with all of you. Basically I am over-thinking and over-sharing, which is just another way of saying that it’s a regular newsletter day.