Nevada primary live upates: Why Nikki Haley won’t face Trump on the ballot

A federal appeals court has ruled that Donald Trump does not have “immunity” from prosecution for crimes committed while he was in office, landing another major blow to his efforts to evade criminal charges for his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

His attorneys are expected to swiftly appeal to the full bench of appeals court judges, or up to the US Supreme Court, teeing up another major constitutional test involving Trump’s campaign at the nation’s highest court.

“For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant,” judges with the US District Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, wrote on Tuesday.

“But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as president no longer protects him against this prosecution.”

Here’s Maroosha Muzaffar with more from the same poll, which also identified a large proportion of the American electorate suspicious of the conservative-majority on the Supreme Court.

Nearly half of Americans say that they want federal courts to reach a verdict on Donald Trump’s criminal charges stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election before votes are cast in this year’s presidential election.

A CNN poll released on Monday found that 43 per cent of Americans see a resolution to that matter as a necessity given that Trump is likely to be the Republican nominee for president this year.

The share of respondents who agreed was markedly higher than the percentage of Americans who said it wasn’t important to their vote, which was around one in five, or the share who said the trial should be postponed until after the election (which was just 11 per cent). A further 16 per cent said they hoped the trial would conclude before November, but were not overly concerned with the outcome’s timing.

The poll is another piece in the growing pile of evidence suggesting that the greatest threat to Trump’s desired second term (beyond his unparalleled unfavourability ratings) remains his four criminal trials. The ex-president is facing a total of 91 felony counts, with prosecutors in two separate jurisdictions are alleging that he committed criminal acts in the course of attempting to reverse Joe Biden’s lawful victory in the 2020 election.

John Bowden takes a closer look.

The Republican front-runner gave an interview to Rob Schmitt of Newsmax last night in which he said, among many other things, that it is time for Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel to go, that the US no longer has “free and fair elections” and that the country is “pathetic”.

Donald Trump has taunted his rival for the Republican presidential rival Nikki Haley ahead of this week’s primary and caucus in Nevada, declaring on Truth Social that the nomination process “seems to be over” before pledging to “finish off a very unpopular candidate” in South Carolina later this month.

Amid a very upbeat post about his election prospects, the former president also appeared to signal the end for Ronna McDaniel’s tenure as Republican National Committee chair, unashamedly throwing his weight around as the most popular conservative in the country.

Ooof. He won’t like this one bit.

As if election season weren’t complicated enough already, Nevada Republicans are holding both a primary and a caucus this year – effectively giving registered conservative voters two chances to declare their preferred candidate for the party’s presidential nomination.

The situation is the result of a dispute between the state and the local branch of the Republican party over a bipartisan bill passed by Nevada’s state legislature in 2021.

The bill stipulated that the Silver State must hold political primaries if more than one candidate is in contention for a given race, doing away with the old party-run caucus system traditionally employed.

As a result, a mandatory state-run Republican primary will be held on Tuesday 6 February.

However, the state Republican party pushed back on this plan and organised that caucuses will also take place on Thursday 8 February.

Under the Nevada Republican party’s rules, candidates are barred from running in both the primary and in the caucuses.

This odd state of play has divided the contenders into two camps and means that Nikki Haley and Donald Trump will not go head-to-head this time around, as they did in Iowa and New Hampshire, but that doesn’t mean Trump supporters can’t spoil her party in the primary.

After Donald Trump stormed the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary in January, blowing away his nearest challengers for the Republican presidential nomination, all eyes now turn to Nevada.

The race to be the GOP’s candidate is now a two-way chase following the exits of Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamy, Asa Hutchinson and Ron DeSantis, leaving Nikki Haley the only survivor.

She has it all to do if she is to weaken Trump’s stranglehold over their party after a strong showing in the Granite State that nevertheless left her a distant second.

Haley and Trump next find themselves heading west and thrust into one of the most bizarre electoral systems in the 50 states, where two competing nominating contests are being held.

Because why choose between a primary and a caucus when you could just have both and confuse everybody?

“Nikki Haley is not on the Ballot in Indiana because she didn’t get enough Petition Signatures – She missed the deadline! If she’s not on in Indiana, she’s not a serious Candidate,” Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

At conservative America’s favourite news source, the Republican nomination process is essentially over and has been for a while, leaving DeSantis and Haley annoyed at perceived favouritism to Trump. Hardly grateful, the former president regularly tears into Fox for what he sees as disloyalty, even ripping his former White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, now a Fox contributor.

The discontent illustrates the ongoing importance of Fox News as an agenda-setter that frequently drives, and not simply reflects, Republican politics. No one can get to the top of the GOP’s hill without it.

It’s also a testament to Fox’s power and influence, said Brian Stelter, media critic and author of two books about Fox News.